Americans for the Arts

Mary Trudel

At last year’s NAMP Conference in San Jose – near the heart of Silicon Valley – my partner, Rory MacPherson, and I announced a national survey to gather input on how arts organizations and collaboratives are faring in the dynamic digital communications landscape.

Responding to input from arts organizations and regional arts collaboratives that are striving to get the most out of the latest digital communications tools and social media, we wanted to take a national snapshot of how arts groups are doing with adoption and integration of new social media platforms into their overall marketing outreach.

We decided to conduct a research project to collect hard data on how groups are managing messaging alignment, resource allocation, and how well they perceive their digital communications and social media efforts are working.

It seemed to us that even those who are leading the field and getting outstanding results are not completely sure they're communicating consistently, clearly and compellingly, wonder if they are connecting authentically with patrons and fans, and are concerned about how to sustain and improve the effectiveness of what they're doing. And universally, arts organizations reported struggling to measure the return on investment of their digital efforts.

Sherry Truhlar

This post is for you if you’re one of the thousands of arts organizations holding a fundraising gala with a silent auction component.

Statistics show that you’re failing miserably.

National averages of silent auctions show a 50%-60% return. That means for every $100 item on the table, you’re selling it for $50 to $60. Sooooo sad.

And once we figure in the costs to produce the auction – hours spent procuring goods, preparing displays, buying services – your returns fall further.

So should you bag the idea?

For organizations already holding a silent auction, continuing to offer it is likely in your best interest. Here’s why.

1.  With targeted changes, you can improve returns.
An audit of our clients found that when returns are average, it’s most often due to poor marketing. Simple changes can have a profound effect.

For instance, one of our clients raised an additional $44 per item once we employed aggressive onsite marketing tactics. With 82 silent items, they earned an additional $3600!

Incorporate both pre-gala and onsite marketing strategies for the best results. At a minimum rewrite your descriptions, use vertical displays, and incorporate a sensory experience.

Ron Evans

A colleague emailed me the other day and wrote “I gave a donation to an arts organization via (insert any popular online social fundraising site here). Does the organization get my information? I never got a thank you.”

Ouch!

Although it is possible that a fundraising site wouldn't share the information of a donor to an organization, it's really unlikely, and with this specific online social site, I know that they DO share the donor information.

So the organization didn't get back to their donor(s) to thank them. I see this happen a lot with donations through newer technology channels. I've seen statistics for something like 71% of nonprofits (not just arts organizations) don't send any sort of thank you (email or otherwise) to online donors. Wow!

Drew McManus

Regardless if you're a client, consultant, or vendor you've been on one side or the other of this perfectly reasonable sounding question:

"Do you have any success stories or case studies on how your service produced a positive result?"

A typical response looks something like this:

"Why yes, after implementing Technology-X, Arts Organization Y experienced a 15 percent increase in single ticket sales in the first year alone. Arts Organization Z experienced a 23 percent increase over two years and a 12 percent jump in the number of annual fund donors."

Naturally, arts organizations want to know how a product or service produced a positive result but in an environment filled with pressures and problems, the decision making process can get cut a bit too short and decisions end up getting influenced by vendor provided statistics more than they should.

Givenik, a service affiliated with Jujamcyn Theaters, connects charities and Broadway theatergoers. When theatergoers buy tickets through Givenik.com, they elect to contribute five percent of the ticket sale to a charity of their choice. Charities benefit through revenue earned on ticket sales. Broadway shows benefit through the attention and goodwill generated when Givenik is promoted to a charity’s supporters.

For Givenik to be successful, it must appeal to all three audiences: charities, shows, and theatergoers. Charities must agree to participate in Givenik and promote it to their supporters. Shows must agree to sacrifice a portion of their ticket revenue. Theatergoers must be aware of the service and what shows and charities are available on it. Social media is particularly well-suited for solving problems like ours by enabling us to connect all three audiences in a cost-effective way.

We primarily use Facebook and Twitter with a Givenik brand user. Our principle strategy is to connect charities, shows and their supporters to us and to each other via service posts.

Show fans become charity fans, charity fans become show fans, and everybody becomes Givenik fans. There is nothing fancy here; this is Social Media 101.

We try to remain engaged in the chatter in both the nonprofit and Broadway worlds and contribute to the conversation wherever we can.

Sara Billmann

I’ve been thinking a lot about audience lately, and how we often we fall into the trap of marketing our performances TO certain audiences rather than thinking about what kind of audience experience we can design to attract the ‘right’ audience for the work that we’re presenting.

It’s a very subtle shift in thinking, but one that I’m starting to think can have a big impact on the work we do.

As a presenter, my involvement in the creation of any given work is basically non-existent. While I’m part of the curatorial team that puts together each season for our audiences, I seldom see the work that we present in advance and rely heavily on the press kit, recordings, and YouTube videos to gain a real understanding of the artists we present (ironic, isn’t it, that while we tout the importance of the live performance experience, we rely on digital media to understand it ourselves).

For most performances, that method works just fine – I either have past experience with an artist, or it is a relatively straightforward performance, and I have easy access to understanding the program and the artists.

Kory Kelly

This year, Actors Theatre has launched a campaign that features the art on our stage with a combined focus on the people who attend. The campaign’s tagline is “Your City. Your Arts. Your Actors Theatre.”

The idea behind this is to feature a variety of people in all the materials, including people of many ethnicities, age groups, occupations, and backgrounds. Each featured patron states why Actors Theatre is THEIR Actors Theatre, with reasons ranging from date night to seasonal fun, and everything in between.

This campaign has provided us audience engagement at offsite events where we provide dry erase boards and photograph people with statements about why they like Actors Theatre. These photos are then looped into our lobby videos.

We chose this campaign for numerous reasons:

1.  Community Focus
Actors Theatre’s mission (expanded for clarity here) is to represent the community in which we live and provide theatrical opportunities that anyone can attend. However, as most arts marketers know, access to all is not something that is easy to say, so why not show it? It is easy for people to look at a picture and say, “Hey! That person is just like me! And they go to Actors! Maybe I should go!”

Brian Reich

There is little denying that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is a genius. He created a site that not only attracts more traffic than any other on the web, but also influences behavior, business, and social norms at an unprecedented level.

He can sit down and build something that most of us could never even imagine existing with lines of code that almost none of us can understand. But for all that brilliance, I wouldn’t give him the task of running a nonprofit organization. And especially not an arts organization. He is not the right fit for the task.

But if Facebook were to commit its resources and energy towards supporting the arts, Zuckerberg would almost certainly assume a leadership role in that effort because of his existing role as CEO of Facebook.

Thankfully that is a hypothetical situation. But it happens all the time – an existing organizational leader is thrust into a position where they are not a good fit. They are asked to guide an effort, inspire a team, and help an organization transform itself to meet a new set of challenges, only to find out too late that they weren’t up for the task. That practice needs to stop.

Sam Horn

I've talked about how having FUN and using LINKS contributes the F.L.A.I.R. that motivates investors to care on my own blog, but what comes next in F.L.A.I.R.?

A = Alliteration

Say these words.

Best Purchase.

Dirt Vacuum.

Bed, Toilet, Etc.

Kind of clunky, eh?

Now make those words alliterative. (Alliteration is when words start with the same sound.)

Best Buy.

Dirt Devil.

Bed, Bath and Beyond.

More musical and memorable, right?

Clayton Lord

As the marketing and communications director at an arts service organization, I’m often approached by marketing directors at our over 300 member companies with questions about various channels of marketing and communications.

Recently, a frazzled executive director at a small company (one of those that often doesn’t have a dedicated or even semi-dedicated marketing person) contacted me to have a conversation about social media. She had a board member who thought they could expand their reach dramatically by reaching out through social media, and she wanted to know how to create a Facebook page to do that.

I was sad to have to tell her that that strategy probably wasn’t going to work. The truth of the matter is that social media, like all the tools in the marcomm toolkit, has a specific spectrum of usefulness—and unfortunately, the type of social media interactions she was talking about just weren’t going to get her very much traction with people who didn’t know or care about her organization already.

Whenever I think about a marcomm plan, I work in my head with a very basic and non-scientific spectrum, stretching from what I term “engagement” (i.e. making those who already know you feel more engaged with you) to “development” (i.e. making those who don’t know you, well, know you).