When dealing with new communities, staff and board members of nonprofit arts organizations are sometimes puzzled when things they thought would work crash and burn. Often, there is really no mystery. We offered free tickets but no one came!We performed at the community center but no one came!We invited people to our offices to discuss how we can work together, but no one came!We sponsored a town hall meeting to present our new ideas but no one … [Read more...]
Radical Empathy
I have a hard time doing new, unfamiliar things. I wish that were not the case, but . . . . Traveling in Europe, for instance, I often go to the train station the day before I'm catching a train to see what it's going to be like. If I don't I lose sleep imagining how any things could go wrong. I'm not Mr. Spontaneity. Last December I was in Seattle visiting family and in one day I did two things I'd never done before. I survived, but it took a … [Read more...]
Planting Vineyards
A community engagement mindset can yield immediate results if the selected "community" is people not too unlike current patrons. You can reach thirty-year-old accountants by crafting marketing materials that are focused on them rather than on the organization. That should be a simple and effective switch as Aubrey Bergauer demonstrated at the California Symphony has demonstrated. (Although experience shows that arts organizations have a tough … [Read more...]
New Year’s Manifesto
The New Year seems to be a good time to try to set down some of my basic thoughts about the need for and the path to effective community engagement. As often happens on this blog, this is a very rough first draft. Refinements will follow. Whereas The environment that nurtured the development of the nonprofit arts industry has changed radically. The sum of these changes create an existential threat to the future of that … [Read more...]
The Long Road
Several months ago Joe Patti of Butts In Seats blogging fame posted a reflection on advice from Seth Godin about why businesses might not be connecting with customers. While I've not met Mr. Patti, it seems that we not infrequently seem to be channeling each other on topics related to community engagement. He pulled out, from Mr. Godin's article, a list of problems that sounded way too familiar to me in my work attempting to get arts … [Read more...]
Eureka!
A member of a current cohort of our Community Engagement Training is a professional musician who is passionate about connecting with communities and has been so for years. Even before running across my books she was intuitively aware of the need for deeper relationships between musicians and people outside the artiverse. She has been an eager and very perceptive participant in the training. All of that is why it was so revealing when she … [Read more...]
Response to Listen vs. Tell
In Listen vs. Tell I spoke of the necessary switch from telling people about our work to listening to them as a pre-requisite for effective communication. As happens not infrequently, Carter Gilles responded thoughtfully and at length. He has given me permission to share his expansion on my thoughts here. Carter Gilles This particular phrasing [Listen vs. Tell] reminded me of the work that the philosopher Carol Gilligan did I … [Read more...]
Listen vs. Tell
Over a year ago I began presented a somewhat tongue-in-cheek means of differentiating among two vastly different styles of approaching sales, audience development, audience engagement, and community engagement–the means by which we connect with the public. It was rooted in the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, the "tell" and "interact" versions of the internet. In sharing the concept with people I realized that basing it on Web 1.0 and Web … [Read more...]
Targets and Timeframes
I have recently found myself concerned with issues related to measuring community engagement, particularly its benefits to arts organizations. (Two-Phase Engagement; Reach and Frequency) There is a tendency among some to know that community engagement is a good thing and, therefore, to resist attempts to measure it's impact. If I'm honest, I may sometimes find myself in that group. There are others who assume that community engagement is at best … [Read more...]
Reach and Frequency
I always proceed with fear and trembling when I venture into the topic of marketing. As I have said in the past, I am not a marketer. Nevertheless, there continue to be numerous valuable lessons from marketing that should support our work in and understanding of community engagement. Stick with me. This will get a tad "wonky." "Reach" and "frequency" are marketing terms that have much application to the discussion of various types of … [Read more...]