Nope, this is not my title. It is blatant theft from Scott Walters' multi-part blog on the topic. For those of you who have not seen the posts, here are links to the first two: Occupy Lincoln Center-Part I and Occupy Lincoln Center-Part II. The thing about kindred spirits is that even if you don't agree 100% with everything they say or the way they say it, you are still captivated by the expression and want to share it. That's the way I feel … [Read more...]
NAMP
The coverage of the National Arts Marketing Project's Conference in November has been extensive and interesting. (Is it only me or is NAMP Conference an odd, unwieldy name for a gathering of marketers? Do a search and you also get the National Association of Meat Packers. . . . But I digress.) Since I've started to share some of my idiosyncratic notions about marketing, I thought it would be a good idea to see what real marketers were saying … [Read more...]
Marketing and More
Many of you probably know (or know of) Katya Andresen and Katya's Nonprofit Marketing Blog. She is an expert on marketing, a great speaker (I've heard her a couple of times), and a relentless blogger. (She posts almost every day. My hat is off, in awe, to her.) She does not present herself as an arts expert. However, in a recent post she presented 3 Diagnoses for why your message isn’t getting through. I can't resist allowing her to make one of … [Read more...]
Engagement via Participation
Andrew Taylor (aka The Artful Manager) has long been for me a source of fascinating (and/or insightful) ideas. I have learned, on occasions too numerous to mention, that when he tells me to read something (book, article, paper, cereal box . . . .) I should do it. His recent post, Participatory practice in the arts, highlights a study by the James Irvine Foundation, Getting In On the Act: How Arts Groups are Creating Opportunities for Active … [Read more...]
What Is Arts Marketing?
I am not a marketer. I have never been a marketer. And I don't play one on TV. I have never had the weight of an arts organization's mission-related income resting on my shoulders. I am (or have been) an artist (composer), arts administration educator, and consultant (occasionally dealing with marketing). I do not have the arrogance to believe that I have definitive answers when it comes to arts marketing. That said, as an academic, I … [Read more...]
Arts 2.0: 40k x $25=$1M
At least twenty years ago I began sharing this formula with students in fundraising classes. (Clearly, we were all math whizzes!) The point was (and is), of course, that a large number of small contributions is just as much $1 million as is a single contribution of that amount. I was concerned way back then about the proliferation of not-for-profit organizations, the skyrocketing costs of labor intensive industries, and the simple math of how … [Read more...]
Art and the Projects
Charles M. Blow, the New York Times columnist, wrote in September about a housing project in West Harlem: It Takes a Village. His principal reason for writing was to highlight a (rare) good news story about children and poverty. As he said, "Writing about children and the poor and the vulnerable these days, there aren’t very many bright spots — but this is one." He visited the Dorothy Day Apartments on Riverside Drive run by Broadway Housing … [Read more...]
Arts 2.0: The Power to Give
My neighbor from down I-85 (or I-40/I-77, I get to choose) has made a big splash recently with a great project for bringing the arts industry into the social media/networking age with respect to fundraising. The Arts and Science Council of Charlotte has introduced a new program, Power2Give. In his October 17 post (The Power to Give) on the NEA's blog, Art Works, Scott Provancher, President of the ASC, introduced this new online … [Read more...]
Equity
It's as if the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy knew I was writing about funding inequity in Quality and Community-2. Seriously, there seems to be something in the air. The NCRP report released recently, Fusing Art, Culture, and Social Change (note that this link may change), points out that: Each year, foundations award about $2.3 billion to the arts, but the distribution of these funds does not reflect the country's evolving … [Read more...]
El Sistema: The Phenomenon
By now, there are probably few in the arts world that do not know about Venezuela's El Sistema, its U.S. (and other) franchises, or its principal ambassador, LA Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel. The results of that national system of community youth orchestras has taken the breath away from thousands of music lovers around the world. José Antonio Abreu's vision of every Venezuelan child playing in an orchestra has yielded stunning … [Read more...]