Here’s another reason for nonprofit arts organizations to make that scene change toward charitable activities.
What is “news?” I was in the process of researching communications and public relations strategies and came across an article written by the people at the Pew Research Center. The article, written by Kirsten Eddy, Katerina Eva Matsa, Michael Lipka, Naomi Forman-Katz, Christopher St. Aubin, Luxuan Wang, Kaitlyn Radde, and Justine Coleman, tackled a simple question with a baroque set of answers: “What Is News?”
What really stopped me in my tracks was right up front. It is no secret that traditional news services are struggling to exist, collapsing upon themselves, firing large swaths of journalists, and have teetered into the “obsolete” aisle, between the buggy whips and 8-track players. The reasons have a great equivalency to the reasons that so many large-scale nonprofit arts organizations are ready to join them. Read the following carefully.
Before the rise of digital and social media, researchers had long approached the question of what news is from the journalist perspective. Ideas of news were often tied to the institution of journalism, and journalists defined news and determined what was newsworthy. “News” was considered information produced and packaged within news organizations for a passive audience, with emphasis (particularly in the United States) placed on a particular tone, a set of values and the idea of journalism playing a civic role in promoting an informed public.
In the digital age, researchers – including Pew Research Center – increasingly study news from the audience perspective, what some have deemed an “audience turn.” Using this approach, the concept of news is not necessarily tied to professional journalism, and audiences, rather than journalists, determine what is news.
I remember talking to a reporter several decades ago who noted that the difference between newspapers and television news, especially in the network evening news programs, was that Walter Cronkite merely read the newspaper to the viewers in clipped, two minute pieces. As long as audiences trusted Walter Cronkite, all would be well. When those interested in the news wre given a story at 6:00pm that interested them, they inevitably read into great detail about it at 7:00am the next morning. One would tease the other and both would flourish by that arrangement.
Today’s versions of news are different, as you well know. Because of the democratizing aspects of the internet, people now get the news they want from the sources they want to believe. There is no single storyteller such as Cronkite. Nor are there viable news media that lead their audience anymore. It is not up to the journalist to decide what is news; it is up to the public. That change has wrought chaos in the news industry and the speedy shuttering of just about every aspect of journalism except one-sided commentary (which, like this column, is not news).
Now go back to the quote and substitute the subject to the nonprofit arts sector instead of the news. The story is eerily similar.
Artistic directors and the equivalent in all the varieties of nonprofit arts organization have, to date, traditionally chosen the art that they want to produce. They may employ a stylistic choice unique (or not) to the community, but, in general, they consistently speak of “leading the audience.” To them, their job’s main focus is to curate information that outpaces their community members’ sensibilities and expectations, just as journalists used to do.
Artistic leaders, it’s no longer your art to curate. It’s theirs.
Just as failing newspapers are those sticking to the notion that news should emanate from the journalist’s perspective, failing nonprofit arts organizations believe that art should emanate from an “artistic vision.” If you serve on a board for a nonprofit arts organization, you may have become brainwashed to the idea that an “artistic vision” is a good thing. It is not. It is a killer.
Every member of your community has their own idea about art. They are doing the curating, not the artistic director. They feel no compulsion to supporting any particular theater, opera, symphony, ballet, or museum. The old ways of supporting a single nonprofit arts organization as “civic rent” — an admirable trait among people who recognized that the arts added something to their community, even if they didn’t particularly like the programming (as long as they got a plaque on the wall) — have fallen by the wayside. Those kinds of donors are in their dotage now.
In case you misunderstand, this is not about paying audiences. That activity is a mere contract and popularity contest, which is why it is irrelevant to the metrics of success for a nonprofit arts organization (hear that, foundation leaders?). The metrics of success for a nonprofit depend on mission impact: people helped, lives changed for the better, community well-being, increased literacy levels, improved health outcomes, breaking the cycle of poverty and homelessness, etc. Everything else flows from that: donor retention, financial sustainability, ability to attract partners and corporate donors, government support, etc.
If your mission has no measurable charitable impact, you’re failing to meet your community’s needs. If that’s the case, just convert to a for-profit company and be done with it.
Either way, whether it concerns newspapers or nonprofit arts organizations, it’s change or die. Pick one.
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