Well, maybe “killing” is too strong. But the survey they just asked nonprofit arts leaders to complete proves that they really, really, really don’t get it.
When we’ve had years of a rusted-out, wheels-coming-off eschewing of charity among our charitable arts institutions, this brand of irresponsible data gathering continues to ask the wrong questions.
Why is this idiocy still happening?
The Advisory Board for the Arts is a DC-based for-profit company with 25 “executive” staff members from cities around the world: Madrid, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Milan, Guadalajara, Mexico City, and a dozen folks from various cities in the DSA. In the “About” section of their website, they claim competence in key elements of consulting for nonprofit arts organizations:
We believe the arts & culture sector is facing unprecedented challenges. That is why here at ABA we focus on your most urgent- and often perennial- priorities.
Pretty words, huh?
In fact, if you had never read the survey they sent out, you might think they actually believe there is a connection between successful arts organizations and the communities they purport to serve.
That’s not, sadly, the way these guys measure success. Like too many, they doggedly ask the wrong questions throughout the survey.
We live in an arts-mosphere where it is clear that only the wealthy are supporting the arts. They donate so that they may attend, the textbook description of elitism.
After all, look at the Dallas Opera. They just completed a $54.5 million campaign, according to an article in the Dallas Morning News.
But look at the not-all-that-fine print:
More than 100 donors contributed to the campaign, with recent significant gifts from the Perot family, the Hamon Foundation, the Vansickle Family Foundation, Cece and Ford Lacy, an anonymous donor, and the TDO board, trustees, and honorary directors.
An opera company in one of the DSA’s largest cities raised $54.5 million in a single campaign. No problem there. “More than 100 donors” should make the hair on the back of your neck stand up in fury.
That’s right. The average gift was more than a half a million dollars. Even if you were to discount the entirety of a single $25 million gift (from the O’Donnell Foundation, whose mission is to “support engineering, science, and mathematics education at the graduate level. The foundation also supports Advanced Placement programs (math, science, English, art) and arts education”), that would still mean that each gift averaged over a quarter of a million dollars.
The Dallas Opera (EIN 75-6004746), a corporation that gains about 80% of its revenue from donated sources — in return for, I suppose, keeping the cost low(?) for the few that donate such high amounts) — is just an elitist playground, counting seats and donors, but never counting what really matters to the communities of Dallas.
What are the results of their community programs, for example, from the community’s point of view? Are they easing the tensions in the community, at the very (very) least?
Community service programs at Dallas Opera and other elitist behemoths, even though their grant applications are full of fundable folderol, get exiled by the elitist leaders among grotesque companies to a position of “adorable charitable gulag.” What they call “outreach” is what the community needs; big productions is what the billionaire donor class wants.
There’s a word for cozying up to rich people (or people who run wealthy foundations) just to get their money in your pocket. Actually, there are four, according to my thesaurus: prostitution, harlotry, hustling, and whoring. And if you’re insulted, just remember the story that ends, “We all know what you are; we’re just haggling on the price.”
Which takes us back to that repulsive survey by the Arts Advisory Board. A six-minute survey, they promise. “We want to learn from arts and culture leaders about their organizations’ 2025 performance,” they entreat. And yet, all they really want to know are the commercial, for-profit benchmarks, as though these organizations had no tax-exempt status at all. Here are some of the questions:
- What portion of your [2025] earned revenue was generated by single ticket sales?
- What kind of programming was the most successful in terms of generating single ticket revenue?
- What portion of your earned revenue was generated by subscription and/ [sic] packaged ticket sales?
- What was the average sold capacity for shows programmed during your 2025 holiday season (e.g., The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol, Handel’s Messiah, etc.)?
Rather than asking about how many tickets were sold and what was the revenue for that (easy questions to answer), how about asking these questions, using the standard developed by no less than the IRS:
It’s not that you have to do these things to be a nonprofit arts organization. A stilted ruling from a court case may have allowed arts organizations to be nonprofit without doing charitable, but it did not make a single arts organization to be worthy of a dime of support.
The general public, as evidenced by diminished support from key sources (including state and local governments), has spoken loudly and angrily about this, and the fury is not just coming from hicks on the right. They want their charitable organizations to be charitable. Period.
A nonprofit arts organization that does not first and foremost try to better its community is not worth a donation, except from those that can afford to buy a $412 ticket (the top price at the Dallas Opera). And with those donors being the beneficiaries of their own donation, you can see why surveys that ask for no measurements of charitable impact continue to murder the industry from within.
Where is the survey of board members and executive directors that asks the right questions to ask of a charity, even an arts nonprofit? Only for-profit institutions measure their worth by profit (it’s right there in the name). Nonprofits quantify their worth with proof of community betterment — and not by the activities created by the company, but by measured results.
It doesn’t matter if you have an education program, for example. When you can prove that your work educated people, then you have a positive metric. But please, stop asking questions about ticket sales. They have nothing to do with success for a nonprofit. Popularity and integrity can intertwine for a single nonprofit arts organization, but only if the company ignores the former and intends the latter.
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