Are We Being Nudged Toward Partnerships

I have started to wonder if there is going to be an increased emphasis on partnerships and perhaps even mergers in the non-profit arts. I often read about mergers by non-profits outside of the arts. Although the presenters consortium upon whose board I sit is in the middle of conducting a merger with a sister organization, I don’t hear about arts organizations doing it that often.

However, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation has recently announced a new granting program, Southern Exposure, which will support the presentation of artists from Central and South America. (By the way, you don’t have to be located in the Mid-Atlantic States to apply.)

Most of the program isn’t outside of what you might expect of such a program except that it will “support projects that are developed collaboratively by presenter consortia based in the United States and its territories and ensure that engagements take place in at least three different cities or towns.”

The Western State Arts Federation (WESTAF) used to have a similar program termed “hub grants” as part of its TourWest grant program up until a few years ago. From what I have heard (which may not be accurate) they discontinued it because of lack of wide spread participation. (We actually participated in a couple years.) But now that times are financially a little tighter, will arts organizations on a national level be more amenable to partnering?

But really, back to my original question of whether a trend might be developing in which organizations are encouraged to partner. One cause of my speculation is that this summer I saw a grant program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities for community colleges that required recipients to involve up to 12 other campuses.

Looking at the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation website, there are signs that they might be going in the direction of encouraging arts organizations to partner more often.

“Over the last five years, MAAF has built a core of program initiatives designed to address specific issues of regional arts support. The work of the Foundation has been focused on:
[…]
-Developing an infrastructure for touring and presenting
-Making connections beyond the region
-Developing partnerships
-Strengthening existing networks
[…]
-Exploring sub-regional initiatives and collaborations with subsets of MAAF state members
[…]

Now granted, the Southern Exposure initiative might have just fit their pre-existing efforts. Given that it does fit into their plans, if Southern Exposure proves successful, they may start to encourage similar collaborations more often.

Hawaii has an active presenting consortia (as do our brethren in the 49th, Alaska) so we are thrilled because this program plays to our strength. Plus, there is a project involving a group from South America we have been kicking around for a couple years. I will be the first to admit, this sort of cooperation isn’t easy to arrange and manage. It helps to have a little incentive. It would be great to see other groups adopt this practice. (Especially if you want to bring me out to consult with you! 😉 )

Info You Can Use: Expertise As Entertainment

So much to do and so little time to do it! I am a little short on time for my post today but I wanted to direct attention to Eric Ziegenhagen’s TEDxMichiganAve talk, Expertise as Entertainment.

There have only been 74 views so I know you all haven’t seen it yet!

What Ziegenhagen talks about is the increasing prevalence of expertise being valued as an attraction. He focuses a lot on restaurants. It is no longer dinner and a show, dinner is the show. With the increased appreciation of culinary skills of chefs thanks to myriad television shows, people are valuing exposure to that skill as an attraction.

Restaurants in turn are designing the dining experience in response to this interest by providing information about the different components of the meal and providing more opportunities to watch the preparation process.

Ziegenhagen speaks of one restaurant that sells tickets to their seatings essentially intending them to be scalped. They apparently researched the laws governing resale of tickets and designed their reservation process in a way that permitted them to be transferred.

Ziegenhagen references the burgeoning TED lecture franchise as a evidence that people are beginning to value what is basically the pre-show lecture/post show talk back as much, if not more, than the actual show itself.

Looking at them in that context and taking a look at what makes the TED talks so engaging and interesting may provide some insight into how to make pre and post show talks more valuable to your audiences. (Clue: It might mean bringing in someone with no association to your organization at all.)

The Little Things Are More Engaging Than You Think

If you are like me, the changes in the economy and people’s expectations about their interactions with the arts probably has you avidly watching for the new theories, techniques and technologies that may be relevant to your operations. Faced with uncertainty and rapid change, it is easy to forget that there are simple little gestures which we repeat over and over whose performance our audiences value. The explicit, big gestures using the newest techniques may pique interest and get them in the door, but it is going to be the small, mundane things that help keep them.

Some of these are passive things that are part of the organizational culture which we barely recognize we do. They don’t require a lot of time and energy but result in constructive activity. It can be something as easy as just leaving the door open as an invitation for something to happen.

I met today with one of the architects working on our facility renovation. I am anticipate we will be having a lot of these sort of meetings which cover small changes that will have a significant impact on the way audiences experience our facility.

One thing I talked to him about was putting more outlets in our scene shop. This isn’t to accommodate more power tools, but rather to accommodate the gathering of students and others. At the moment, the table area we typically use for meetings, lunch and effecting repairs has started to turn into a learning commons. Students are plugging in so many computers and other devices that they have extension cords crossing in front of the staircase to my office which I subsequently trip over.

I realized this afternoon that this gathering is actually the result of a decision I made three years ago to make the area more welcoming. Prior to that, on days we didn’t have classes or activities in the shop, I would leave the shop door locked and the lights off. All the better to show how ecologically responsible we were by keeping our energy usage to a minimum. Students were theoretically supposed to enter through another door to attend classes but often passed through the shop if the door was open.

As enrollment grew over the last few years and I saw exterior gathering areas becoming more crowded, I started to leave the lights on and the door open on a regular basis. Over that time, the number of people seeking a place to study or chat grew (granted, a little strange given that scene shops are noisy places, but there you are.)

Now we have faculty from visual arts and music who don’t normally teach in our building coming in to eat their lunch. The area has become something of a learning commons and collaborative space for students and faculty. I have students designing a poster and postcard for the show next month running up to my office with their thumb drives to get feedback on their work. Before the hammering started this afternoon, one of the music teachers was pounding on the meeting tables to teach a percussion sequence to a student.

I don’t know how long this may last. I can definitely attribute some of this activity to the dynamics between specific students and that may disappear when they graduate.

I can’t directly link any increase in attendance to this gathering of students so leaving the door open hasn’t helped my revenue situation much in a time when that is increasingly becoming a concern. However, since no one on staff has to design a poster or postcard for the next show, we are able to spend that time in other pursuits. When it comes time to distribute the materials, I bet the students will be interested in helping given their ownership of the piece. This afternoon, the students helped populate areas of the theatre during a photo shoot we were doing in support of a space naming campaign we hope to launch fairly soon. Potentially, their presence might yield income if those images are used in the campaign.

I know this sounds a little vague and hard to quantify. What I am advocating for is basically not forgetting about the assets you have to offer to your community and making them available for use by your constituencies. Some activities may take a little more effort than just leaving doors unlocked and lights on. For example, even though you want to go home, you leave the concession stand open, the lobby lights on and the restrooms open while people stand around chatting and chatting and chatting because the welcoming environment creates an intangible, but valuable positive impression of the organization even though it isn’t as effortless as it may appear.

In some cases you may be able turn a weakness and inaction into a strength. Don’t have money for landscaping? Plant wild flowers that attract butterflies. The front area won’t seem as much a rambling mess with butterflies flitting around.

What you do may not even be connected with your physical plant. Maybe the diner everyone on staff eats at all the time can turn into the site of an impromptu consultation session on how to create haunted houses and wire up holiday displays. That sort of thing reminds everyone that 1) Your organization contributes to the economy by patronizing area business; 2) Enhances the value of the diner in the community; 3) Makes people aware of the knowledge and expertise represented by your organization. I am sure there are fourth, fifth and beyond reasons, but note none of these have anything to do with specifically trying to attract people to your shows. Yet they engage your community at the cost of making a little extra effort at a place you were going to anyway.

It is key that you treat these sort of activities like giving someone a gift– you can’t have an expectation of something in return. If there are positive results, it may take years for it to manifest in a manner you can attribute to your efforts but it may not do so in the way you anticipated. Just as in personal relationships, what you value and want from your friendship with someone may not be the same as what your friend perceives as the valuable aspects of their relationship with you.

Info You Can Use: Does Friending A Candidate Endanger Your Non-Profit Status

The Non Profit Law blog linked to a really great publication put out by the Alliance for Justice that explains whether your online activity might run afoul prohibitions in your 501 (c) 3 status. This is the clearest explanation of these issues I have read.

“This guide aims to answer the questions nonprofit managers most frequently face regarding the Internet and social media.”

The document covers situations that don’t involve online activity, but really it is the social media element that comprises the uncharted territory that people aren’t clear about. The document makes a distinction between lobbying, which a 501 c 3 non-profit can do and supporting a candidate, which they can’t.

Though sometimes the distinction is very subtle. For example, you can make a post on Representative X’s Facebook account, “Rep X, support the arts by voting Yes on Bill 123.”and that is direct lobbying. If you post a slightly different message, “People of My State, tell Rep X, to support the arts by voting Yes on Bill 123, ” and that is considered grassroots lobbying because it is a general call to others to take some action. If you post, “We love Rep X because she supports the arts and voted Yes on Bill 123,” that is promoting a specific candidate.

Except in some very specific circumstances, you can’t link to a candidate’s website. In fact, you can’t link to any website that promotes a candidate and you are responsible for making sure the content of the site doesn’t change since you first linked to it.

For example, you are doing a renovation and link to the website of the company that is providing you with sustainable wood as a way of proving to your constituency that you are acting responsibly. If the supplier changes their website to criticize a candidate’s stance on logging, your organization might be in trouble.

There are also restrictions on allowing employees to use company equipment, even on their time off, to express support for a candidate.

In answer the question posed by the title of this entry, no, you can’t friend a candidate on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. They are free to friend and follow your organization. Even though etiquette suggests you follow them in return, the IRS suggests you don’t.

About the only time you are safe to have a promotion of a candidate on your website is if you allow Google to place ads on your website and have no control over what they are placing.

There are a lot of other questions answered in the document as well. Since a lot of 501 (c) 3 organizations are associated with 501 (c) 4s which have looser restrictions, they provide some detailed guidance about how closely connected their activities can be. The guide also deals with setting policies for renting your mailing lists, guest bloggers, moderating blog commenters, using photos, hosting videos.

It is clear that there are going to be a lot of nuances specific to the activities of different organizations. However, if you have had questions about what is permissible as lobbying and prohibited as campaign support, and don’t have a tax lawyer immediately available, this is a good place to start to find your answers.