Archives for 2006

The “Tell a Friend” feature is a common occurrence these days on any thoughtful website that wants to encourage and facilitate referrals. The scripts and the technology are essentially free, and well within the reach of even nonprofit arts organizations. But, of course, the big-league web players are already a dozen steps ahead of this […]

Various reports and projects are consuming the bulk of my brain space this week. I’ll be back in the blogging business next week. See you then.

The Plexus Institute, which focuses on issues in health care, has some wonderful language that also fits the nonprofit cultural industry. See if this sounds familiar to your organization, or the struggle to professionalize arts organizations in a way that detaches them from their passion: Our model for organizations emanated from the industrial era, in […]

Some very cool ideas from the folks at the IDEO design firm: They’ve posted a series of conceptual prototypes that rethink the future of the business card as part of their ”Identity Card Concept Project.” Like good designers, they break the object and the values it conveys into elemental functions, and project how those functions […]

A great piece by Malcolm Gladwell on the astoundingly successful Saddleback Church suggests that connection and commitment are not products of individual affiliation to a large organization, but of interaction with a small group. Says Gladwell: Membership in a small group is a better predictor of whether people volunteer or give money than how often […]

There were some rich and juicy comments to my post of last week on ”Ecological mission vs. insular alliance.” Thanks to all who contributed (and can still contribute) to the conversation. From the comments, and from other e-mail I received, it seemed that many interpreted my suggestion for ”softer boundaries” between arts organizations within a […]

I just posted a reprint (with permission, of course) of a Q & A on my weblog work written by a current student at the Drexel University arts administration program. I figured some would be interested in the ‘behind the scenes’ view of how this weblog started and why I do it. If you’re not […]

Jeffrey Zaslow has a cute piece in the Wall Street Journal about creating a more intentional soundtrack to his daily activities through his iPod. Like a good journalist, he asks some experts on the subject of soundtracks for advice and insight — a film director, a television series creator, a major studio executive. The process […]

There’s a common theme that pops up in almost every conversation I have with funders, practitioners, and academics about the future of cultural enterprise. Here’s the motif: our mission statements and aspirations are ecological in scope, but our alliances and energies are locked to the particular channel we’ve chosen to serve. For example, a symphony’s […]