Barry Hessenius’s Barry’s Blog recently featured “year-end” predictions for the arts sector for 2008 from a number of participants in the “Hessenius Group” which he hosts on his blog. I thought I would share my contribution to his list. To read all the contributions, visit Barry’s Blog.
Happy New Year!
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January 2nd, 2008 at 03:23pm
Gary Steuer
A new study, Portraits of Donors, conducted by The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University was recently released by Bank of America, looked at the philanthropic patterns of high net worth households. This report is based on data already gathered and issued in an initial report that examined giving by the wealthiest 3.1 percent of households. This new study explicitly looks at giving by the wealthiest Americans those that have a net worth of more than $1 million and annual income of more than $200,000. Eighty percent of the sample had a net worth of more than $2 million, and the group of responders was clustered into 12 archetypes:
While space won’t allow describing the characteristics of each of these donor groups, or their behavior, there are a number of very interesting results relevant to giving to the arts that I would like to highlight. Let’s focus first on the sweet spot those categories that seem most likely to support the arts (in bold above): Entrepreneurs, Dynasts, Metropolitans, and High Frequency Volunteer. To combine them all, the most likely arts donor would be a person of high net worth with substantial wealth coming from a business they own, who also gives a philanthropy allowance to their children, lives in a major metropolitan area, and volunteers more than 200 hours a year.
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January 2nd, 2008 at 03:14pm
Gary Steuer
Over lunch today, Elena Park, from the Metropolitan Opera, gave a richly textured case study of how an organization, steeped in tradition with a deeply loyal constituency, innovated over a 2 year period without sacrificing its values or standards. The Metropolitan Opera is not your average venue it is one of the largest opera companies in the world, yet it has been artistically and socially isolated. Since 2001, the Met experienced an audience decline from 90.8% box office sales to 76.8% box office sales in 2005. Through a major re-visioning of its visual image and its institutional culture, the Met turned things around and operated at 84% capacity last season and this year looks even better. How did they do it? What can be learned from their story? (more…)
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November 4th, 2007 at 07:28pm
Rebecca Borden
Jay Wilkinson of Firespring has developed a list of criteria to assess whether your non-profit website is strong or not. By the way, most non-profits score between 60-65 on Firespring’s website scorecard. He cautions that many non-profits fall victim to the common mistakes of web design. In organizations with small staffs and small budgets, they typically develop websites in house or by volunteers; by necessity, they have to do it cheap. But when organizations enable their website to animate their mission, they approach this tool as an investment in their communications and in program dissemination. Jay stressed understanding the end user of your website, which he referred to as: information seekers, volunteers, employers, job seekers, donors/contributors, public agencies, peer non-profits, etc. (more…)
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November 3rd, 2007 at 01:10pm
Rebecca Borden
Recently, United Technologies Corporation (UTC) celebrated 25 years of sponsorship of the arts and they decided to celebrate the public art way. Since they wanted greater logo real estate as corporate sponsors, they decided to commission original works and installations on their own. This session presented a case study of UTC’s sponsored public art in Madison Square Park, NYC and Broadgate Arena, London, UK. The most interesting component of this case was how they used surveys, conducted by Audience Research & Analysis, to measure the impact of this endeavor.
How to you measure the value of public art, which by nature, has a more elusive, serendipitous, and iterative visitor experience than say a theatre or museum?
How can you design an assessment survey that documents valued added to both the consumer as well as the sponsor? (The presenters generously shared their powerpoint with me for this blog). (more…)
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November 3rd, 2007 at 12:12pm
Rebecca Borden
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