Last time I mentioned that on several occasions recently I have been confronted by the disconnect that exists between arts organizations’ self-perceptions with respect to community engagement and the reality of what they are (not) doing. In that post I gave my yes/no, multiple choice questions for assessing community engagement readiness. This time I’m sharing the essay questions. (You can take the professor out of the classroom, but . . . .)
Long Form Readiness Assessment
Commitment to Community Engagement
Part II
Relationships
With what communities is your organization intentionally engaging? For each:
Name the community
Briefly describe the relationship-building process you followed.
Briefly describe the relationship-maintenance activities you employ.
What are their principal interests and concerns? How do you know?
How long have these efforts been in place?
Programming
In what ways does your programming:
Reflect what you have learned from each community with which you are engaged?
Reflect the fact that [ ] is your home base? (I.e., how does it differ from a similar organization in a different city?)
Administration
How is community engagement supported by your organization’s administrative structure? What staff members are responsible for community engagement? To whom do they report?
How is community engagement supported in organizational planning processes? How is community engagement supported in organizational budgeting? Is there a dedicated budget for community engagement?
How are staff members responsible for community engagement evaluated?
Funding
What new sources of funding have you received as a result of your engagement with these communities? (Comment especially on support from sources that are not primarily arts funders.)
Marketing/Sales
In what ways do your marketing and sales activities demonstrate an awareness of the needs and interests of these communities?
Provide data documenting increased sales as a result of these activities.
Governance
In what ways does your governance (board membership, agendas, activities) reflect your engagement with these communities?
Evaluation
How are you measuring:
The success of your engagement efforts?
The impact of your engagement efforts on the organization as a whole?
Again, the purposes of these questions are two-fold. One, they do a reasonably good job of showing how far along an organization is in developing its community engagement muscles. Second, they are educational in that some of them may reflect ideas about successful engagement that may not have been part of the internal discussions before.
Later this year all these questions will be on my website (www.artsengaged.com)–but they’re not up there yet. They will also be included in my second book which will be available mid-year. (I’ve now twice committed to a date in public, so I guess I’m stuck.) It should come as no surprise that I’ll be saying more here about that later.
Engage!
Doug
Photo:
Some rights reserved by krissen
Hey, Doug,
Great post.
I love the way you phrased the marketing questions!