BVA and Employee Engagement Tools & Resources

Business Volunteers for the Arts logo Americans for the Arts is the national organization for providing services, information, and leadership to local arts agencies–including those that operate or would like to start Business Volunteers for the Arts® or employee engagement programs. We recognize that engaging business professionals and employees through the arts is key to fostering a desirable work environment, increasing efficiency and morale, and building the competitive advantage of a business. In the sections below, you may access our various resources on creating employee engagement programs. You can also view a list of current BVA programs around the country, and find out what the network looks like from our Business Volunteers for the Arts® National Report for Fiscal Year 2013 Fact Sheet.

Research

Americans for the Arts conducts an annual survey of the Business Volunteers for the Arts® (BVA) field for the purpose of providing the best possible benchmarking information about skills-based volunteer work in the arts. These files are only viewable by BVA managers; please log in to access them.

Regional Workshops

Want to help your local arts community build its capacity to partner with the business community? Through our local pARTnership Movement workshop program, Americans for the Arts can come directly to you and your community to help you get started.

Our 1 and 3 hour workshops are customizable depending on the audience and its interests, covering a range of topics including arts and business 101, relationship building, employee engagement, and program building. We can also focus on a group’s special interest area, such as partnering with businesses to further public art, arts education, arts advocacy, or economic development efforts in a community.

Whether your audience is artists, arts administrators, local business leaders, or a combination of all three, Americans for the Arts is ready and willing to lead a workshop in your community! For more information contact the Private Sector Initiatives team.

Professional Development

Looking for ways to strengthen your volunteer and employee engagement programs, or learn from others in the field so you can successfully launch one of your own? Browse through our professional development offerings that are focused on Arts & Business on ArtsU, Americans for the Arts' online education forum for arts professionals to gain new skills, knowledge, and connections to further their personal and organizational goals.

Listserv
As a member of Americans for the Arts, you are encouraged to stay up to date on the latest news and developments from the Business Volunteers for the Arts® and Employee Engagement network. To sign up for the BVA listserv, click here, fill in your contact information, and check the Business Volunteers for the Arts® ‘standard’ box.

Employee Engagement Series
Want to start an employee engagement program in your community? Browse through our suite of employee engagement program workbooks below, and visit the BVA homepage for even more resources.

  • Corporate Art Activations: This workbook focuses on one of the many ways arts organizations can work with businesses–corporate art activations. This concept lives under employee engagement as culture building or creativity training as well as physical space transformation.
  • Arts Incubators: Many local arts agencies have started to develop arts-specific incubator programs to help individual artists thrive and allow local businesses tap into creative programs. This workbook focuses on one of these organizations, the AIR Institute of Berea College.
  • Arts-Based Training: This workbook the Arts & Business Council of Nashville's WorkCreative program, which brings arts into the workplace by engaging employees in hands-on creativity to stimulate communication, build teamwork, and spark innovation for effective business growth.
  • Corporate Arts Challenges: This workbook centers on ArtsWave’s corporate arts challenge, CincySings, which brings arts into the workplace by creating a friendly, amateur singing competition featuring choirs of company employees.
  • Business Volunteers for the Arts®: This guide is designed to assist new Business Volunteers for the Arts® (BVA) program managers by orienting them to the full options and potential of the program, as well as to delineate best practices in each of the program elements.

Webinars
We know you are committed to expanding your professional skills and knowledge, but you can't always travel to meetings and presentations. Take advantage of our easy option for online learning!

Blog Salons
Take a look at our past blog salons and stay tuned for information on upcoming events. In between blog salons, you can stay up-to-date with our bi-weekly Private Sector ARTSblog posts.

  • Time & Treasure to the Arts: This blog salon was a week-long conversation on philanthropy and volunteerism for the arts. It is a collection of posts from corporate supporters of the arts, United Arts funds, business volunteers, philanthropists, and more on topics such as corporate volunteerism, public funding in the arts, policies affecting arts philanthropy, and young patrons groups.
  • Arts & Business Partnerships: This blog salon focused on the variety of arts and business partnerships that exist around the country, both on the national and local levels, with input from both the business and arts perspectives.
  • Corporate Social Responsibility & the Arts: This blog salon featured posts from corporate and foundation leaders who have partnered with arts organizations on events and programs having a large impact within their communities. These mutually beneficial partnerships between the private sector  and the arts world create positive social change within companies and the communities they serve.
  • Employee Engagement and the Arts: This blog salon heard from voices in the corporate and arts communities about efforts to bring the arts to the workplace to stimulate innovation and deepen the daily practice of creativity in our lives.

One-Pagers
Trying to make the case to businesses in your area that using the arts can engage their employees? Check out our one-pager advocacy tools, Six Ways to Use the Arts to Boost Employee Engagement and The Arts Boost Employee Engagement.

pARTnership Movement
The pARTnership Movement is an initiative from Americans for the Arts designed to reach business leaders with the message that partnering with the arts can build their competitive advantage. Below is a listing of resources useful to organizations running employee engagement programs, though we encourage you to visit the website to browse through everything it has to offer.

News
Read our news stories on great examples of corporate volunteering and employee engagement through the arts.

Research
The BCA Survey of Business Support for the Arts is the nation’s largest survey of its kind, delving beyond pure numbers into the motivations behind and goals of business partnerships with the arts. The specific findings from the survey are used to project national trends in support for the arts by businesses large and small across our nation.

Tool-Kits
Bringing Arts into the Workplace: Arts organizations are partnering with businesses to help build employee engagement and enhance teamwork and combine right-brain imagination with left-brain logic. Learn how organizations across the country are making the case for arts-based training and creating new and innovative programs to work with businesses.

Working with Volunteers: Volunteers are a critical component of any arts organization. From ushers to fundraising, to pro-bono consulting and board service, volunteers expand the capacity of a nonprofit. Volunteers also create an entry point for establishing a relationship with businesses. While this tool-kit focuses on skills-based volunteering, much of the advice is applicable to all types of volunteers.

Employee Engagement and the Arts: Even in the current economy, businesses are still searching for innovative ways to recruit and retain employees. Programs that allow employees to bring their values to work are good investments. The arts are a wonderful catalyst that can help shift perceptions, embrace diversity, build team spirit, foster creative thinking and improve communication.

Establishing a Business Volunteers for the Arts® Program: This tool-kit focuses on how volunteer programs can make employees feel more engaged on the job, learn new skills or improve their existing skills, and increase interaction between junior and senior employees, and how we can bring this information into conversations with corporate partners about designing Business Volunteers for the Arts® programs.

Branding and Logos

If you have created a Business Volunteers for the Arts® or other employee engagement program using our tool-kits and resources, please use these logos on all related materials, both in print and on the web. For more information contact the Private Sector Initiatives team. These files are only viewable by BVA managers; please log in to access them.

JPG Files

EPS Files

Volunteer Training

Should you choose to train your business volunteers via computer, rather than an in-person training, you may direct them to training modules supplied by Americans for the Arts. These modules are brief powerpoint presentations that cover: