My wanderings across the digital landscape brought me to a study on the Compass Point website. (they provide services to the non-profit sector.) The study, Help Wanted: Turnover and Vacancy In Non-Profits, is about four years old, but it examines why it is so tough to keep a non-profit organization fully staffed. (There is a similar one studying the challenges of Executive Directors, too)
The study was performed in the San Francisco Bay area and encompasses all non-profits from arts to social services, but there are some very interesting lessons to be learned.
From the executive summary, we learn the following facts:
-8% of the paid staff positions at nonprofits are vacant. -30% of these positions have been vacant for four months or more. -24% of the vacancies are management positions.Which employees are leaving and why
- A striking 47% of the people leaving nonprofits are non-program staff: administrative assistants, bookkeepers, CFOs, development directors, etc. Executive directors report that the three most common reasons for staff resignation are: a great job offer elsewhere, dissatisfaction with compensation, and the cost of living in the Bay Area.
So okay, the whole cost of living in Bay Area isn't applicable elsewhere.
There were some interesting results about where people are going.
Where exiting employees go:
The most common destination of exiting nonprofit employees is other nonprofits; 34% move on to another nonprofit agency. Moving to the for-profit sector accounts for only 20% of nonprofit turnover.
This is a good news/bad news thing. While it is great that people are sticking to the non-profit sector and continuing to enhance the sector's ability to serve the public as a whole, non-profits are not only competing with each other for funding and, in the arts, audiences, but now have to compete for personnel as well.
Other additional interesting facts-
Of those organizations surveyed, only 13% had a person dedicated to human resources. Most everyone else had the fuctions shared by one or more other people. 47% of the respondents indicated that the executive director was the sole person developing hiring, recruitment and retention strategies.
What I found most interesting because I had never stopped to think otherwise myself is that executive directors felt a 0% turnover rate was an ultimate goal. And really, I would have immediately agreed. The study also said that EDs didn't have any expectations that some positions would turn over more frequently than others.
The truth of the matter is, the study showed "certain positions as having a normal turnover rate of 60% per year, while other positions may have a turnover rate of 15% per year." The study notes that obviously high turnover in some positions (or dependent on the size of the organization, any position) can have a more adverse effect than turnover in others.
Different plans for retention and replacement need to be made with realistic projections about how swiftly a change is expected. According to the study, the reality of the day is that many people view being in the same job for over 5 years as letting their careers stagnate. People are going to move around despite best efforts at keeping salaries and benefits competitive.
Knowing this fact doesn't make life as an executive director any easier though. Many EDs interviewed were reluctant to discuss the impact of this prevelant trend with their boards because they felt a high turnover rate would reflect badly on their management skills. Many people in the study admitted they held on to incompetent folks because they were afraid they wouldn't be able to find a replacement at all. The other problem with a tight labor market is that programs the non-profit planned on offering have to be limited or cancelled outright for want of staff people.
So an executive director, anxious that their board will learn about the high turnover rate keeps ineffectual workers, distributes the work of the vacant positions as well as a portion of the inefficient ones' to the rest of the overworked staff. In order to relieve the pressure on them, the ED has to cancel other programs which brings the demoralizing realization that the organization isn't as effective as it once was. (And lets face it, most non-profit workers are surviving on their idealism, not their pay.) It is any wonder the report on executive directors says that while EDs are just as likely to stay in the non-profit sector when they too move on, they don't take executive director positions.
The end of the report offers strategies for avoiding turnover where it can be, accepting and planning for it where it can't be and minimizing the impact when it does happen. These recommendations are across the board to boards of directors, non-profit organizations and funders/providers of technical assistance.
Found an interesting report on the Knight Foundation website about an initiative they funded trying to provide a central arts marketing support system for communities.
What is nice is that the case studies of the communities they worked with really run the gamut so they have lessons for everyone, including funders looking to replicate the effort in the future. One project was anchored in a new performing arts center, another was a stand alone with hopes of getting for and non-profit business, some were cooperative efforts with media companies and convention and visitor bureaus, others were focussed on arts districts.
In some cases, communities received money for planning, but either got turned down for implementation funding or decided not to apply and went forward with the plan without Knight Foundation funding.
Ambitions also differed. In some places, the funded programs tried to be the marketing resource that the small arts organizations couldn't afford. In other places, there were too many organizations with too varied priorities and interests to serve and so the program opted to create a centralized resource for information dissemination instead.
The results were also varied. In some cases things fell apart when the grant funding stopped. In another case, it didn't even come together but inspired organizations to explore cooperation in a new direction. In still other cases organizations continue to receive their grant funding so, while the future looks promising, it is too soon to know how they will fare when it stops.
Among the lessons the Knight Foundation learned for those of you who might be seeking to participate in a replication of their efforts on a smaller scale:
-Cooperative marketing programs may work best when they focus mainly on producing collective benefits for the local arts and culture community as whole, rather than on trying to build marketing capacity of individual organizations.-Cooperation may be easier when local arts groups can be united around a common external challenge that can reduce their inclination to compete with one another.
-Marketing cooperation may also be easier in larger markets because of the greater potential for economies of scale, which can reduce the cost of cooperation to individual organizations and third party funders.
-Intentional efforts to be inclusive when planning a cooperative marketing venture may buy goodwill that can provide legitimacy for later decisions.
The one thing about the study results that was dispiriting was that fact that creating a central entity that functions as an arts marketing agency for those without the resources for their own staff didn't work.
This sort of set up has always been a minor dream of community arts organizations. If it were easy to accomplish, people would have done it already all over the place to be certain. It is great that the Knight Foundation took this on because it reveals pitfalls that subsequent attempts can address in planning similar projects. It would just be nice if success were a little easier to realize, especially in smaller communities and organizations that would benefit most.
By way of Ben Cameron's July 2005 Field Letter, I discovered an interesting program Berkeley Rep is doing with teens called their Teen Council.
More than just an advisory council, the theatre provides opportunities for teens to participate in poetry slams, play readings, one act play festivals, playwrighting contests and trips to Broadway.
Though it isn't mentioned on the theatre website, Cameron's letter talks about a recent Teen Theatre Conference the rep sponsored where students participated in panel discussions and seminars, some lead by peers, others by working professionals. Topics covered concerns about drama programs in the student' high schools and race as well as discussions about "Stage Management, Directing Your Peers, Developing your Presence as a Theater Artist, Auditioning, Fundraising and Designing Marketing Materials."
Even without the support of Target Stores, I think any organization could adapt some of the strategies Berkeley Rep uses here to get younger people more involved with them than just having reduced ticket night. I don't seem myself able to do many of these things directly, but their program has sparked some interesting ideas in my brain to attract the old and young alike.
About a month ago, I talked about some changes proposed for the Western Arts Alliance (WAA) Conference which the organizers hope will provide the members with the opportunities they need to do business.
Last week, WAA posted the results of Key Person's Interviews they had conducted on the discussion board of their website. The discussion board is password protected for members only, but I have received permission to reference the results here. I offer this information to my readership at large more or less as information about trends rather than specifically offering a lot of opinion and analysis (though I will offer some!)
Artists agents/Managers and Presenters were interviewed and the results really begin to illustrate, at least for me, why WAA felt the need to change the format. In certain areas there really exists a fairly large gulf between the two groups. Some of it can never be fixed because as a member of one group, you have priorities that you can't share with the other group and still do your job.
In other areas there is room for coming together.
One of the main goals of attendance for presenters is networking with other presenters-
"While exhibitors come to the conference with presenters as leads/prospects/targets, presenters come to the conference first and foremost for peer-to-peer interaction with other presenters. •...opportunities for casual, relaxed, and face-to-face conversations with colleagues, including “deep discussions about art,” seem to be very high on the list of presenter priorities at the conference. • Face-to-face networking is one of the most significant factors in the curatorial process (III)...Comments to the effect of “WAA should be about relationship building” were very common."
Artists/Managers/Agents however feel they are in an adversarial position in some instances with presenters. Many felt that presenters didn't understand the economics of being an exhibitor as well as the artist/agents understood the economics of being a presenter. There are also mentions of a "cliquey" nature of the conference contributing to the Us vs Them atmosphere.
Others commented that they felt the presenters attending were viewing the conference as a vacation rather than a place of serious business. I wonder how moving it to Los Angeles from places like Albuquerque and Spokane will impact this feeling. There was a comment that presenters at APAP in NYC are much more business like, but I wonder if that is just because there are so many in attendance, no one notices if people have wandered off to go shopping or see a Broadway show.
On the other hand, maybe they weren't attending WAA to conduct business but rather just scouting. There was another group of responses that exhibitors felt the people from presenting organizations in attendance weren't empowered to make decisions.
Even more distressing perhaps for the artists/managers, among the results of the survey of presenters was that there was little relationship between showcasing and deciding to contract performers. I wonder how many people will showcase next year knowing that presenters aren't necessarily making booking decisions as a result.
One thing both sides could agree upon was the despairing lack of ethics some presenters were exhibiting, particularly in terms of breaking contracts and agreements. Of course, no one considers themselves unethical so the last two conference sessions I have attended on ethics have been sparsely attended.
Some interesting state of the arts type results from the interviews, some of which will surprise few people.
• Presenters are moving toward more conservative programming choices because the “bottom line” is factoring into programming in a much more significant way than prior to 9/11... o Exhibitors seem concerned, even resentful, that presenters seem to be booking more pragmatically these days... o Many exhibitors perceive presenters, particularly those in the West, are making a shift to more thematic programming and programming that is more intricately tied to arts education programs and/or arts programs within presenters’ host institutions.
I actually wrote about an aspect of this last trend right after I returned from the WAA conference. Ironically, all the schools mentioned in the article are on the East Coast so if it isn't a trend they are noticing there yet, they will quite soon.
One last bit to mention before I am done. I have saved the best for last. There was one bit of feedback from artist/manager/agents that knocked my socks off and I wonder what it portends.
"• Many exhibitors believe that the business has not changed for them, although they see it changing around them. Most exhibitors had a clear idea of their mission or vision. They’ve been doing what they’ve been doing, their niche, their network of peers and presenters, etc. were all slowly evolving."
I really wonder what this means. It can't be that everyone else is changing but them. Are they simply too close to the changes they are going through to notice. Or perhaps it is true that their niche is changing and they aren't and they are feeling the adverse effects of deciding to resist the change but don't feel they have the skills to compete in the changing world. Instead of admitting things are changing, they hold the belief it is not for them because in that scenario, they continue to be successful.
There were some additional results that might bear this out.
• A few younger exhibitors/firms clearly were aggressively seeking a continued path of growth and evolution. It was this group of exhibitors who articulated the desire to be part of WAA but not the need to be part of WAA. These are the “change agents” of the industry, typified by gaining their experience at larger agencies, going out on their own and aggressively sticking to their business plan, or constantly re-aligning their business plan to respond to outside pressures/dynamics. They are agile, fearless and most like their contemporaries in other industries.
So young folks, seeing the direction things are going, leave a big agency they have worked at for years and start their own business with an eye for responding to the ebb and flow of the shifting marketplace.
Of course, there are the other guys--
• The antithesis to these “change agents” were the “old school”: [the] impression is that some don’t see/feel the need to change their small, niche business even while they are keenly aware of how small the marketplace is for their art form and how much economic pressure the presenters are facing.
Just when I thought I would have nothing of interest to blog on, (I am working on stuff, but nothing I can write about), I somehow come across Completely Pointless Movie Reviews which included a review about Utah Opera's Romeo and Juliet.
Apparently, in an attempt to reach a younger audience, they asked Juliet to blog about how much she loves Romeo, how much she doesn't want to marry Paris. The attempt to write like a teenager isn't authentic enough to fool anyone I think. And the top 5 reasons to see the show that they emailed the Completely Pointless reviewer are pretty weak.
But I gotta think that it was probably the best attempt anyone had made to make a younger audience aware of the opera than had been made in the recent past. Though I suspect that plenty of young people would just see it as another example of adults trying to be cool and completely failing. Don't know if they will make any converts out of good intentions.
Just today I saw a blog entry about an upcoming conference that is going to teach businesses to exploit blogging. The author is pretty upset that businesses are trying to co-opt blogging for their own purposes and cites a McDonald's attempt that backfired.
Elisa at Worker Bee's Blog touched upon a similar situationabout six months ago in relation to the arts. (Granted, it was in relation to one of my entries, but she deals with some segments of the issue better than I had.)
You gotta be careful about trying to harvest blogging for your own purposes because there are a lot of eyes watching and anything that smacks of insincerity, once detected, is loathed.
Cool As Hell Theatre Podcast lives up to its name. C.A.S.H. (as it likes to refer to itself) linked to my blog so I went over to explore.
The podcast episode I listened to (#32-Oct 11) started out with such energy and excitement, it was easy to see how powerful podcasting can be when done well. I am sure material like Michael's will be seen as quaint and rustic down the road, but it is on the cutting edge today.
I really applaud him for taking on the subject of race and religion in theatre in the same episode because the potential answers his interviewees might give could create a tense atmosphere (as could his questions).
He asked some really great questions of his guests that would really help people who have never attended shows understand theatre in ways that newspaper stories and reviews can't.
Edit: Just wanted to further expound upon my comments since my attention was split a little when I was finishing this entry. There were a couple things that I really liked about this podcast that I felt made it helpful for people who never attended shows.
1-Michael is honestly curious. If he doesn't know something, he asks and isn't afraid to be seen as ignorant.
2-Michael doesn't pretend to be trying to do a perfect professional show for the news. He has done his research for his questions, but he still ends up mispronouncing stuff. But again, combined with the aforementioned curiousity it comes across as an honest attempt to learn rather than fumbling.
All this, combined with his absolute fearlessness about taking on hot issues like race and religion in the same show, is the sort of thing that I think will make people more likely to feel they have the tools to educate themselves and check out the arts.
It seems of late that Andrew Taylor's writing on Artful Manager has been been inspiring me to connect ideas he presents with those I found in other articles. My entry yesterday is one recent example.
Usually I feel elated and proud of myself for seeing connections between ideas from different places. Some thoughts his writings evoked yesterday were rather disturbing though. I started thinking about subjects everyone wants to think they are on the right side of, but if they make an honest assessment, find they share a burden of blame.
I was reading Andrew Taylor's Measuring Value keynote speech delivered to the NJ Theatre Alliance. It is mostly a discussion of how any institution or individual that is providing funding to a non-profit concern wants to track the value of the non-profit's operations on the community. People and institutions are interested in a return on their investment be it serving greater numbers, how effectively these numbers are being served or any other criteria.
He goes on to note that as time goes by, it is the measures that define arts organizations rather than the mission and the elements of the organization that make it unique.
Nothing terrible about this to be sure. But it was a couple sentences he quoted that elicted some memories of other articles. The first is from psychologist Kenneth Kenniston:
"We measure the success of schools not by the kinds of human beings they promote but by whatever increases in reading scores they chalk up."
The second is from two attendees at the conference at which Andrew spoke:
"Said one participant, "we're constantly trying to fit ourselves into what others want us to be." Said one funder on a panel discussion, "We're moving away from relationship-based philanthropy," toward funding based on matrices and aligned with corporate brand."
I recently read two articles where school focus on what type of graduates they were producing lead to some discomforting results.
The first was Jonathan Kozol's article in the September issue of Harper's magazine, "Still Separate, Still Unequal:
America's Educational Apartheid." Among the educational disparities he notes, (and as you imagine, there are many) is that at affluent schools, students have choice of electives like journalism and computer graphics while the poorer schools had vocational courses like multiple levels of hair dressing and sewing.
Essentially, there is an expectation about the jobs students at each school will fill when they graduate regardless of their achievements or aspirations.
I mention this as something of a counterpoint to another recent article, this one from the New Yorker, "Getting In-
The social logic of Ivy League admissions." by Malcolm Gladwell. He basically talks about how the Ivy League schools shifted from merit based admissions to other criteria in order to keep their student body a predominantly WASP demographic.
Among the criteria, according to Jerome Karabel's The Chosen, which Gladwell quotes, were manliness -
"The admissions committee viewed evidence of “manliness” with particular enthusiasm. One boy gained admission despite an academic prediction of 70 because “there was apparently something manly and distinctive about him..."
Things that kept people out of the Ivy League were equally intangible-
"...they found handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of various candidates’ files. “This young woman could be one of the brightest applicants in the pool but there are several references to shyness,” read one. Another comment reads, “Seems a tad frothy.”
The Ivys' focus shifted from merit
"to a 'best graduates' approach to admissions...The Ivy League schools justified their emphasis on character and personality, however, by arguing that they were searching for the students who would have the greatest success after college. They were looking for leaders, and leadership, the officials of the Ivy League believed, was not a simple matter of academic brilliance."
True, academic success doesn't equal success in the real world.(Witness Harvard grads and C students, George W. Bush and John Kerry.) This is another example though of how measuring the success of schools by the type of human being they promote can have negative results for certain groups.
I am not saying the No Child Left Behind measures are good. I actually slogged through writing all this to make the following suggestion--if this sort of institutionalization of expectations happens from middle schools all the way up to Ivy League, is it occuring in our arts organizations as well?
The Ivys are doing this sort of thing, Gladwell says, to protect the perception of their brand.
In the Second World War, as Yale faced plummeting enrollment and revenues, it continued to turn down qualified Jewish applicants. As Karabel writes, “In the language of sociology, Yale judged its symbolic capital to be even more precious than its economic capital.” No good brand manager would sacrifice reputation for short-term gain.
He also uses the following anecdote:
"I once had a conversation with someone who worked for an advertising agency that represented one of the big luxury automobile brands. He said that he was worried that his client’s new lower-priced line was being bought disproportionately by black women. He insisted that he did not mean this in a racist way. It was just a fact, he said. Black women would destroy the brand’s cachet. It was his job to protect his client from the attentions of the socially undesirable."
Though this example has a tinge of racism, this is a real concern for any brand--"Sometimes when companies try to create more of a mass market, a lot of the early adopters feel the brand is being bastardized,.."(from Entrepeneur.com)
So reading these different articles this week got me thinking. Are arts organizations trying to protect their brand either consciously or unconsciously by keeping the bulk of the perceived undesirables out and just letting a token few in? We talk about needing to diversify our audiences and perform outreach to different communities. But do we really want them showing up?
The Kozol article cites schools claiming "rich variations in ethnic background" but in actuality had 2,800 black and Hispanic students, 1 Asian and 3 whites. When arts organizations are claiming to have diverse audiences, are they basing it on similarly tilted numbers? Are they only expending energy and resources to maintain a ratio at which they feel comfortable using the "ethnically diverse audience" tag.
I am not saying it is intentional or maliciously done. I am just asking people to honestly examine the situation the arts are in and figure out if the system is placing limits on who our organizations can appeal to.
If as, I quoted in Andrew Taylor's article, arts orgs are feeling pressure to conform to a corporate brand or be what other people want us to be (ie people with money), what about feeling pressure to maintain a certain aura for individual patrons? There are certain types of people who give lots of money who essentially keep our doors open. Are we afraid they will stop giving if they feel our ballet/symphony/theatre loses its cachet?
When we read in Kozol's article or hear on the news that in New Orleans the affluent moved to the suburbs leaving the poor in the city, can it help but enter our subconscious that if the affluent leave us, those left won't have the means to regularly buy enough tickets or donate enough money?
I am sure there was similar hand wringing at some point over whether offically telling people not to worry about dressing up, it is okay to come in jeans, was going to destroy the brand. That hasn't driven too many people away. But with the whole controversy over the inconsiderate patrons who come in late and talk on their cell phones or to their friends, there is already additional erosion to the brand transpiring. Can arts organizations afford to risk further potential damage to their public image?
You may damn me for being so politically incorrect and posing these insensitive questions. I am partially playing devil's advocate, but partially serious. You may think your company is enlightened and doesn't have any of this taint upon them. But really, unless you are wholly independent of private, foundation or government funding, I feel safe in saying you ain't as pure as you think. I am certainly not making that claim and I live in a place where I am in the ethnic minority.
When I talked about arts organizations bearing some of the blame at the beginning of this entry, I was essentially referring to a situation I have talked about before where organizations say they aren't elitist, but don't make an effort to alter that perception either. I think all these questions I have posed about fear of brand erosion contributing factors to this reluctance to act. (That an some are elitist.)
But at the same time, as I noted, arts organizations are in a sort of trap of expectations. We can resolve to honestly change our programming and really go about cultivating a new audience over the long term and making our offerings accessible to them. There are foundations out there who will be thrilled to underwrite it in return for...you know it...reporting measurable results.
It is a lot tougher to change audiences and donors. Many of the decisions they make are beyond an organization's scope of control. If they want a Cadillac and they feel you are offering an Elantra, they may leave. When they leave, the Cadillac dealer and the real estate company that specialize in multi-million dollar homes who both underwrite your shows each year may decide to leave as well. (I have seen the ad the bank puts in my playbill and the one they put in the symphony's playbill. Its pretty clear whose money they value more.)
Then maybe some of your board members leave because they no longer have the opportunity to socialize with the people they want to network. Your fundraising capacity suffers a little more because now you no longer have the matching funds for foundation grant proposals.
In the face of such possible outcomes, is it any wonder an arts institution might feel they were making their organizational identity subservient to measurable outcomes and brand identity? Is it any wonder they keep desperately catering to a segment of the population that is quickly dying off? (And not just for their $10 billion in bequests!)
From the "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right" file.
Last week, Artsjournal.com linked to a Backstage story about a Republican proposal in the House of Representatives to get rid of funding for the NEA, NEH and PBS. Looking at donation rates from 2001, they concluded that "The funding could easily be funded by private donations."
The proposal was part of the Republican Study Committee's "Operation Offset" report which looks for ways cut the federal budget to pay for the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.
Now there are many arguements one may make against this certainly. But what inspired my entry today was the recollection of an entry on the Artful Manager a month ago about the delay in the Senate's vote to repeal the estate tax.
The Artful Manager quotes an article by the American Arts Alliance that noted:
A 2004 Congressional Budget Office study reported that eliminating the estate tax would result in an estimated 22% decline in charitable bequests. A report issued by the Brookings Institution indicates that a repeal of the estate tax would result in a total loss of about $10 billion in charitable giving each year.
The amount the Republican Study Committee says the private sector contributed to non-profit arts in 2001--$11.5 billion. So that leaves 1.5 billion for everyone to fight over, eh?
Well actually, that is comparing apples and oranges. The 10 billion probably includes bequests to hospitals, churches, United Way, Red Cross along with arts organizations. The RSC's $11.5 billion probably includes direct giving in fundraising campaigns as well as bequests.
The point is though, the House members are projecting private giving can make up for the loss of the NEA at the same time the Senate is considering a move which will remove the incentive for a segment of private giving. Even if the arts only get $2 billion of the annual bequests, that is still huge and there are some who will lose big.
If both efforts succeed, it will be a devestating blow from two directions for some organizations.
The vote to repeal was delayed according to Senate Finance Chair Charles Grassley, "It would appear "unseemly" for Congress to push through a repeal of the estate tax while also coping with the hurricane disaster in the Gulf" (nod to Artful Manager for the link)
What to do? Well again I must bow in deference to His Artfulness who links to the following discussion on the Western States Arts Federation website which examines it all better than I can.
I was just perusing some websites I hadn't looked at in a bit and came across the Panel on the Non-Profit Sector website. The panel was convened by The Independent Sector, a coalition of about 500 charities, foundations and corporate giving programs.
Back in June, the Panel on the Non-Profit Sector submitted recommendations to Congress regarding issues facing non-profit organizations. On September 30, they finished soliciting comments on a draft of supplemental recommendations they will make to Congress in October.
Their recommendations should be of interest to anyone involved with a non-profit organization. They not only outline steps Congress and the IRS should and shouldn't take, but those that organizations themselves should enact.
The document includes proposals on Federal and State oversight of non-profits (there should be more and better coordination between state and federal level); Better Standards for Reporting to the IRS; More Stringent and Frequent Reviews of Tax Exempt Status; and Abusive Tax Shelters and Charitable Organizations, Amended Rules for Non-Cash Contributions
There are a couple areas I haven't mentioned and the standards for different size organizations vary so the report bears reading if you have concerns in any area related to these subjects.
The sections that seemed particularly pertinent to current events were those dealing with excessive travel expenditures and compensation for Board Members and Executive Officers. Essentially, they suggest stricter standards, tougher penalties and greater transparency on Form 990-
Compensation reports on the Forms should clearly distinguish between base salary, benefits, bonuses, long-term incentive compensation, deferred compensation, and other financial arrangements or transactions treated as compensation (for example, interest-free loans or payment of a spouse’s travelexpenses) to the individual.
There are also suggestions on the size, structure and composition of Boards. The panel cites the problem of:
Failures by boards of directors in fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities may arise when a board leaves governing responsibility to a small number of people, some of whom may have conflicts of interest that can mar their judgment. Other problems emerge when a board disperses responsibility among many people, thereby lessening the obligations of each and by default, increasing the authority of the chief executive officer.Many board members do not have the training or information necessary to understand adequately their fiduciary responsibilities or common practices for the boards of charitable organizations.
Other sections deal with the related issues of conflicts of interest and audit committees.
The Independent Sector has a statement of their commitment to accountability and transparency right on their main page so the nature of the suggestions, which essentially embrace these concepts, should come as no surprise to anyone.
Since this is also obviously an attempt to take a proactive stance and provide guidance to non-profits before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act starts to be applied to that sector, it will be interesting to see what steps Congress takes.
After my long entry of yesterday, I thought I would be brief today. Just wanted to link to a cool event in San Diego covered by Spearbearer Down Left.
San Diego Dance Theatre teams up with the Metropolitan Transit Development Board and presents site specific dance at trolley stops. Folks from NYC my be a little blase about this since you can see busker performances at every subway stop.
It seems like the dance company struck upon a good partnership with a municipal organization to bring a little art and enjoyment into people's lives. The activities may also not only increase awareness of the dance company, but also about the physical spaces at each trolley stop. It is easy to steam along through a station to and from a train without being cognizant of one's surroundings. Suddenly these people are integrating stairs, platforms, support beams into their performance and one sees the building with new eyes.
Actually, learning about programs like this makes me look at my surroundings with new eyes and wonder what I might make work.
A very interesting discussion is transpiring across three theatre blogs in the last two weeks that really starts to give a peek at the potential blogs have for people in the arts to participate in an exchange and development of great ideas outside of a collegiate setting. There has been a lot of theoretic talk about the potential, but this is a good illustration.
Actually, I should qualify this further by saying an exchange on original topics. A couple of these blogs have a raging debate over whether Shakespeare really wrote his stuff, but that debate predates the internet.
Anyhow, the postings are on the topic of "Regionalitis," a term coined by YS at Mirror Up To Nature in a recent entry referring to:
Regionalitis is the peculiar malady suffered by mediocre efforts of excellent playwrights. Usually regionalitis is caused by the continued and incessant performing of a play by regional and smaller theatres, having the interesting effect of perpetuating a undeserved reputation of greatness while at the same time building up an incredible expectation of the casts and directors.
He makes this comment after seeing Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, in Boston essentially saying it was good, but not great enough to deserve all the performances it is getting across the country accompanied by the hype that surrounds a show that gets produced so much.
Spearbearer Down Left comments on his blog that when he saw The Real Thing at A.C.T. in San Francisco, it was "pitch perfect." He does conceed that there may be a lot of "me-too-ism" in theatre's and expand upon it further in a later entry saying:
...but sometimes I get the sneaking suspicion that some plays are done because they're terrific, but sometimes they're done because all the cool kids are doing them. I noticed a long time ago that no one really wants to discover new voices. Some do, but to truly discover one involves too big a risk. Better to almost, sort-of discover someone who's a really hot property but not quite a theatrical household name yet.
A third blogger, Scott Walters, on Theatre Ideas throws his own hat in the ring but expands on the idea a bit himself. He feels that the repeated performances of the same plays across the country deprives people of the opportunity to see shows that speak to their place in the world.
He says that mass media has created the illusion that we are a homogeneous culture watching the same TV show and movies and reading the same books. However, he offers some observations that this might not be the case. He notes that while he lives in Asheville, NC and knows he is the same person who once lived in the middle of NYC,
I have appreciated totally different things depending on where I have lived. For instance, in NYC, rap music "made sense," it reflected my surroundings; here in Asheville, a small city of 100,000 surrounded by the incredible natural beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it seems jarring and incongruous. It seems to me that NYC people are focused much more on their inner life -- their aesthetic responses, their intellectual and emotional lives; Asheville people are more tuned into the environment that surrounds them, and their souls resonate to the things they see and hear around them. A novel like The Hours drove me crazy when I read it a few months ago; in NYC, I may have thought it absolutely brilliant.
Regionalitis treats every part of the country the same ignoring this differences in life focus. (Perhaps this is why the guy in San Francisco thought the Stoppard play was great but it didn't resonate with the guy in Boston.) He points out as another example that The Kentucky Cycle was well received regionally all over the country and won a Pultizer Prize, but did poorly in NYC. He posits that it was due to the pacing and subject did not synch with the urban vibe.
He expounds upon this idea in a later entry and later clarifies his ideas after some criticism of them.
The whole process this went through really fires up my idealism gene. One guy coins a phrase, another expands upon his idea looking at it from the vantage of artistic integrity and choices, a third guy looks at it with an eye toward tuning works to regional nuances and I summarize and regurgitate it all.
I didn't just pull this all together simply because actually watching an idea develop over blogs excited me. It was the whole discussion that got me thinking.
It is no surprise to me that different genres of performances appeal to regions and locales in varying degrees. The idea that mass media is shaping what we do and don't watch and listen to is nothing new to me either, especially in these days of media consolidation into the hands of a few corporations.
It never occurred to me though that what they were promoting might not, as Scott Walters puts it, make sense for all regions of the country. I always just accepted, (probably due to the media) that the new stuff was just a logical evolution from what came before. New Wave of the 80s gave way to grunge of the 90s gave way to hiphop of the 00s.
Even though I should have known better, it always seemed like popular entertainment companies were reacting to trends rather than shaping them. To a greater degree pop entertainment does. However, once a trend reaches a certain saturation point, companies jump on it and promote it to everyone. They count on a desire to be part of the in crowd to overwhelm any sense that it was incongruous to one's lifestyle.
That is what this whole regionalitis thread is all about. Arts organizations jumping on a bandwagon and urging audiences to join all the rest of the smart people across the country in enjoying the show.
Arts organizations aren't as successful as the major media because they don't have as much money to throw around to convince people to join their fellow citizens. They also can't guarantee the same experience as everyone else in the country. The AMC movie theatres in Philadelphia offer screen sizes and surround sound systems pretty comparable to those in other cities around the country.
However, the talents of actors and musicians at the theatres and symphonies in Philly aren't the same as those in theatres elsewhere, nor are the spaces they perform in. Seeing Dali in the Philadelphia Museum of Art isn't the same as seeing the same works in the Dali Museum in St. Petersburgh, FL.
Nor is there the sense of a collective experience when a book, CD, movie is released on the same day for everyone present when performances transpire in different seasons, months or even years.
And then there are differences in ticket prices, economic conditions, education level and a half dozen other demographic elements.
This makes something of an argument for resisting regionalitis and taking an honest look at what programming and vibe is right for your community instead of trying to ride the coattails of the successes experienced by other people in other places at other times.
Heck with a man not being able to jump into the same river twice. Regionalitis can be like trying to jump into the same river from 1,500 miles away while in the middle of a drought.