Earlier this month Albert at philanthropy blog, White Courtesy Telephone, did an entry on "Four Common Funder Misconceptions About Non-profits" and made a post along the same vein later in the month.
The entries offer an interesting, if not daunting, peek into the thought processes of funders. Albert encourages them to rethink their attitudes in terms of micromanaging non-profits, seeing their role as culling out the weak organizations, encouraging charities to merge and run themselves in a more business like manner.
Albert encourages funders to give applicants some slack when it comes to grading neatness.
"There’s a kind of mental trap that some grantmakers fall into. When we’re learning the ropes, we quickly realize there’s not enough money to go around for all the worthy applicants who approach us for funding...So we devise many little tests of nonprofit worthiness—including a grant-seeker’s mastery of English punctuation—to help rationalize to ourselves our recommendation that funding be denied to certain groups.To my younger funder colleagues: Don’t fall into this trap. There are more honest ways to rationalize a denial of funding, ways that can put your relationship with applicants on a much sounder footing."
As a side note, while Albert doesn't feel that running charities like businesses will work for many organizations, he does concede that a profit/non-profit hybrid covered in a recent issue of Fast Company could be viable for theatres. I wouldn't be surprised if organizations structured like the one profiled in the magazine weren't the future of arts oriented non-profits.
Last week I received a questionnaire from a Performing Arts Management student at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford. With her permission, I am reposting it here. It gives some insight into what up and coming leaders are thinking.
As a theatre/company manager… What educational background is required/expected?What kind of experience is required/expected?
Where are the jobs? Who does the hiring?
Will there be jobs in this field in 5 years? 15 years?
What are the “big names” in the field?
What personal characteristics are needed for success in this field?
I haven't formulated my answers yet. I am a little wary about prognosticating on the whole idea of whether there will be jobs in 5 years or 15 years. My answer will certainly be longer than a yes or no.
The question that interested me most was regarding who the big names in the field are. Folks like Joe Dowling at the Guthrie and Libby Appel who just left Oregon Shakespeare come to mind. But it occurs to me that unlike other areas of the arts, there are no managers that I ever hear people say they want to emulate.
When a design from a big name designer comes in, I have heard tech directors and designers make impressed noises. When the names of noted directors, choreographers, musicians, actors and dancers are attached to a production, it lends a degree of gravitas. Artists and even theatre managers often express an interest in working with these talented people, but rarely, if ever, have I heard anyone say they wanted to work with a specific theatre manager. I have heard people voice strong desires to work at theatres, but can't remember anyone say they wanted to absorb the wisdom of one of the administrative leaders.
My theory is that this is because a theatre manager is effective in relation to the community in which they operate. What they do well may not translate well to other places. Knowing this, other theatre managers don't tend to idolize too many others. which is not to say they don't envy another's resources and budget.
Now one may claim that directors, performers and designers must tailor their approaches to different physical spaces, technical resources and personnel. However, these people are dealing with others who share a standard vocabulary. They can send emails and FEDEX packages in advance of their arrival and progress can be made without anyone even knowing what they look like.
A theatre manager can't administer from afar and sight unseen based on inventory lists, census data and other transmitted information. They have to walk around the facility and physically assess assets and liabilities, they have to drive around town and get a sense of the community, they have to make personal contact with people.
Now my alternate theory is that given reports I have read noting that theatre managers rarely get a chance to review the latest literature on myriad topics related to running their organization, no buzz is being generated about management superstars.
One thing I have heard often which backs up my "good management is local" theory is people expressing admiration for managers at their organization or organizations in their area. It is these managers with whom people have regular contact that they wish to emulate.
My answer to the student's question about big names will probably encompass a bit of what I have written here as well as the names of some management theorists with whom I believe managers should be familiar.
I present these questions here as a challenge to my blog readers to consider what your answers might be to this student. And if anyone has any thoughts, I would be happy to pass them along to her.
There must be something in the air because I keep finding interesting articles on employment. I am going to have to create a category specifically for the topic if this keeps up.
This time around it is a piece by Arthur C. Brooks in The American called "I Love My Work." In it, Brooks talks about how important work is to providing meaning and direction in day to day living.
As I have noted before, the feeling that one's work is meaningful, at least by ones own standards, is a powerful motivator.
"...people who think their work allows them to be productive are about five times more likely to be very satisfied with their jobs than people who do not feel they can be productive. And those who are proud to work for their employers are more than ten times as likely to be very satisfied with their jobs as those who are not proud."
Brooks cites a survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago which showed that 89% of people who worked at least 10 hours a week were very to somewhat satisfied with their jobs. The percentages remained about the same whether people were in high income or low income jobs, whether they completed college or not and regardless of working in private, non-profit or government jobs.
And given an opportunity to be financially secure for life without having to work again, 69% of American adults would continue working in some capacity.
One of the areas that I was a little skeptical about was the idea that pay and benefits such as vacations actually detracted from people's enjoyment of work.
"Indeed, there is strong evidence that compensation such as pay and vacation—the “extrinsic rewards” for working—can actually have a negative effect on job satisfaction by degrading the “intrinsic rewards” that people care about so much. The reason for this is that people stop seeing a task as fun when pay is involved."
With that theory, people working for non-profits must be having the most fun of anyone, right? Well, maybe. No matter how much people like work, working long, hard hours under pressure takes the thrill out of the experience for pretty much everyone according to the survey.
I should note that at this point since it sounded like Brooks was implying that employees would be happier being paid less and having fewer vacations days, I checked on The American a little more and wasn't surprised to learn it was run by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. That fact doesn't make the data any less interesting, though it did put some of the analysis and conclusions in perspective.
One of the thing that really interested me was that people who had been unemployed for at least a month at any point within the decade prior to the survey being conducted "were 1/3 less likely to say they were very happy than those who had not been unemployed." Presumably a fair number of the people interviewed had regained employment at the time they had been surveyed.
Again, I was a little wary about how Brooks was interpreting the data. He implies that people are concerned about being unemployed because of the despondency and lack of purpose it brings, citing "the misery of idleness" when discussing job security. He doesn't question if people aren't actually worried that they won't be able to feed their families. I can see how the experience of being unemployed and on welfare, even once, can impact on a person's happiness given that they may worry they will again have hard time providing for their loved ones.
I should note that Brooks anticipates my concerns about what he is advocating by the end of the piece where he remarks that what he is promoting can be accomplished, "Not with a national program to drive down pay and benefits—that would be absurd—but with an effort to find ways to give people a personal sense of control in their jobs."
I don't know why my entries have been revolving around employment and leadership the last couple weeks but here I go again....
I happened across a brief article on BoardSource about assessing an organization's chief executive. As the piece points out, boards go to great pains in the interview process to ensure they are hiring the most capable candidate but rarely set up a formal process by which they can regularly provide feedback.
There are going to be periods of high emotion when the chief executive is either being patted on the back or glared at. Waiting until these times to assess a person is not the most constructive for the chief executive's development and growth, even if one has a positive impression of them.
I should note that the article I linked to partially consists of instructions of how to set up a review process using the assessment tool BoardSource has developed. I generally try to avoid hawking other peoples services specifically if they aren't fairly inexpensive. But having sat on many boards and attended meetings of boards of which I was not a member, I can attest to the number of meetings some boards will take parsing the language on simple amendments to the governing rules. It might take years for a board to draw up an assessment instrument.
BoardSource has an assessment tool that can be completed on a print version or online by board members. Their questions at the very least provide a strong starting point if the board feels the need for a more customized questionnaire.
That said, the online tool while time saving and convenient on a number of fronts is also 4 1/2 times more expensive than the print version. Unless it allows 5-10 years of usage, it seems excessively expensive to process the assessment of a single person. Human Resource professionals can probably speak on the reasonableness of the cost better than I. I understand they need to recoup their investment in developing it, but if it were the only option available, I am sure the cost would present an even greater impediment to evaluating a chief executive for many boards.
For most boards, whether they know about the assessment tools or not, it can be easier to promise a chief executive a similar amount of money as a bonus next year if they improve or as a raise if the valued person stays than to invest weeks completing, collecting and collating an evaluation. Given the salaries and bonuses for profit CEOs are granted by their boards, it wouldn't be surprising if non-profit boards perceived money as the medium by which rewards and severance are conducted.
Neill Archer Roan doesn't write as often as I would like him to, but when he does, it is always worth reading. Apropos to my entry last week about how I suspected turnover in nonprofits was having a greater negative impact than organizations were letting on, Neill quotes a gentleman named Matthew Kelly on the core reasons for turnover.
"The #1 reason people leave a job is not because they have a dysfunctional relationship with their manager or because they don’t feel appreciated. They leave because they cannot see the connection between the work they are doing today and the future they imagine for themselves."
Now given that I have had those exact same thoughts verbatim when I was considering leaving a job and until this morning believed I was the pretty much the only one who did, I felt an obligation to quote it. While I haven't always liked my bosses and certainly felt under appreciated, it wasn't enough to make me want to leave. Others I have worked with have said, and occasionally fumed, they were leaving because of bosses, under appreciation, lack of pay and work environment.
I always thought I was atypical for having "pictured something different for myself as a primary reason for moving on. Frankly, next to "the boss is a bastard," it seems like pretty weak motivation. If the boss isn't a jerk and things aren't overly oppressive, why would anyone want to move on?
Probably because the boss is a jerk is a more convincing reason than I want more self-actualization and so the boss gets blamed a lot more often than he/she should because nobody has the guts to admit they want more fulfillment. People expect fulfillment from their spouses and low cal, low fat brownies, work is supposed to be dispiriting, endured and complained about. I want more from my job sounds whiny in comparison.
Interestingly enough, about 10 years ago I was attending a customer service seminar. The woman leading it quoted stats showing that quality of product being equal, people don't defect to a competitor because they are cheaper, that is just the easiest excuse to use. Kelly's message seems to be quite similar.
While I wouldn't be surprised to learn a little consumer mentality has crept into how we approach our jobs over the last decade, I suspect that this unspoken motivation has been lurking below the surface for a long while now.
I will say that was I a little disappointed with the way Kelly's piece ended. It started out being damn interesting and thought provoking but ended with a him encouraging people to follow their dreams which just seemed de rigeur motivational speaking.
...or maybe there is someone you think is.
Arts Presenters is soliciting applications for participants at the next Emerging Leader Institute being held at conference January 2008.
Deadline is next Monday though. I am sorry I didn't see the announcement on the website sooner. The application may be found here and the guidelines here. There are some nice benefits like free APAP membership for a year and free conference admission if you are a first time attendee. You do have to be affiliated with a member entity- presenter, artist, agency, etc.
I attended last year (which you can read about here and here), and found the experience enjoyable and valuable.
In fact, I had a conference call today with some other alumni of the program to discuss steps we would like to take to improve the experience for both new attendees and alumni both at the conference and after they return home. This is an effort that had its impetus with the alumni of the program who wish to have the emerging issues facing arts leaders addressed and planned for. And to develop a network of support.
Frankly, if I have my druthers, I'd want whatever network of support is developed opened to all arts people be they members of the organization or not.
But that could be many years down the road. In the meantime, if you are interested in the program, apply!
Apologies to regular readers of the blog. I started using a new ticketing system and started training a new staff person in the same week which has not be conducive to blog entries. But things have evened out a bit and here I am.
I read a report over the weekend on the perceived lack of qualified workers in non-profit settings. A study done by people at Johns Hopkins of all non-profit sectors, including performing arts, found that, in general, it wasn't as difficult to find qualified people to fill positions as some recent newspaper articles have made it out to be. Most organizations were also mostly pleased by the quality of the people they did hire.
There were some areas that were harder to recruit for than others. Organizations that served the elderly had a slightly harder time than most finding people. Fundraisers and information technology staff were among the toughest positions to fill. Trying to achieve greater minority representation was also quite difficult. The report did note that few organizations made special efforts to attract minorities, though.
For the arts in particular, there were some details that boded well and others not so well. On the positive side, "...turnover and hiring activity was somewhat lower...among theaters. On the negative side, both theatres and museums were the group most dissatisfied with the diversity of their applicants and with their ability to meet the salary requirements of their applicants.
I had mixed feelings about the results the survey found regarding staff turnover. Eighty percent of those surveyed had turn over in the year prior. "Surprisingly, however, the proportions claiming negative
effects from this turnover were less pronounced than might
have been expected, and were often offset by roughly similar
proportions claiming positive effects."
In the accompanying chart on page 5, the only categories in which the positive responses outstrip the negative are in organizational budget and staff creativity. The negatives were much higher than the positives in productivity, morale and burnout.
The positives about the budget are obvious. Not having to pay someone helps save money. I am uneasy about the staff creativity result because I think the go to position for so many non-profits when they face staff shortages of any sort is to smile and determine to work harder and smarter. I suspect creativity claim is actually a ploy to cope with the increased workload and is a facade for the damage to morale and feeling of burnout. Having been in similar situations, I imagine that the creativity manifests itself in penny pinching steps akin to my grandmother washing aluminum foil and hanging it on the line to dry so it can be reused. Everyone stands around and congratulates each other on how clever they are to be so thrifty. Then go back to their offices and skip lunch so they can get all their work done, their hunger pangs temporary dulled by the recently shared optimism over how creative the staff has become.
The areas where the negatives and positives were close were ability to fulfill mission, quality of programming and quantity of programming. I would be interested to know if there was a correlation between those who felt the staff became more creative and those who cut programming and reported the quality of the programming increased. I know I sound cynical, but again I suspect that people soothed their concerns about cutting back on programming by convincing themselves that they had succeeded in providing higher quality with fewer resources.
I have had the same conversation internally and among staff at a number of places. So yes, you can accuse me of projecting my biases, but I can't imagine those dialogs are anywhere near atypical.
When I read in the report about how resilient these nonprofits are, I think about the fact that it is actually individual people who provide the resiliency by redoubling their efforts out of dedication to a cause. I am pleased that many organizations are able to satisfy their personnel needs. But the situation still bears watching because the individual's determination to soldier on may be masking a problem that will suddenly emerge with mass burnout or retirements.
I was listening to the latest entry from the Cool As Hell Theatre podcast while reviewing the financials from last month when both the host and the interviewee began talking about how ushering in return for admission was demeaning and soul killing (around 13:00). I actually backed the audio up and listened and then did so again when I got home.
I am not quite sure what Nick Olivero objection to the practice is, especially since the show his company is producing apparently is all about the whole labor for money for goods exchange.
Of course, this is the show the company is doing free of charge so their whole point about the labor-cash exchange might go in a different direction. However, since they praise Starbucks for giving everyone benefits and talk about how their company is paying performers more and more each year, I can't think that they damn the process too much.
The lead in to the criticism of ushering is that Nick, being dirt poor, feels it is important to offer performances for free because the only way he has been able to see shows otherwise has been to usher. Then he and host, Michael Rice, start talking about how demeaning and soul killing it is.
I acknowledge that the situation of being so poor that you can't afford a ticket to a show can be demeaning. So the fact that you have to split your attention between the show and seating patron, scowling at cell phone users and tracking down video tapers when you could be focusing entirely on the performance can be depressing. But the forces which shape this reality are external to the theatre's see the show for free policy.
The alternatives are to ask people to usher and not see the show or pay people to usher in which case the management may have greater expectations of the ushers which would preclude the opportunity to see the show. One of my paid staff or I watch the lobby so our volunteer ushers can see the show. If I were paying them, I would expect them to be in the lobby far longer in order to serve late comers.
But in the interests of understanding this point of view, if anyone can offer some insight into where they are coming from, I would appreciate knowing.
Thinking about this issue got me reminiscing about a time early in my career when I learned that some of our core volunteers were actually working the arts organization circuit. I was crushed since we obviously offered a superior artistic product to the other guys and went to a lot of effort to treat our volunteers well. I felt the cuckold.
This was back in the days when I believed that all one had to do was produce good work and the public, as enthusiastic about the arts as I was, would flock to the door. Frankly, I think there may have been more truth to that sentiment then than now.
But those volunteers were having a wonderful time in their retirement being involved with a number of arts organizations and seeing lots of good stuff. I have a good group of those type of people volunteering for me right now as well as those who want to do the least they can for the greatest opportunity to see a show.
Except for a couple high school students, I don't really have any passionate young artistic types who can't afford to buy tickets to the performances. Perhaps I am still possessed of naivety, but sincerity counts a lot for me. In many respects, I would rather have an entranced student letting things fall through the cracks as the weakest member of the volunteer team than a person completing tasks with the least effort required to gain admittance.
By way of Arts and Letters Daily, The Boston Globe has a column by Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland that addresses the apparent misapprehension that arts classes improve test scores for students. Their research found the absence of a causal relationship between arts classes and a rise in test scores.
They did, however, find "that arts programs teach a specific set of thinking skills rarely addressed elsewhere in the curriculum." They feel arts advocates do their cause an injustice by focusing on the weak relationship with improved test scores.
Where the other classes emphasize and reward memorization and recall of facts, their year long study showed that arts classes cultivated "visual-spatial abilities, reflection, self-criticism, and the willingness to experiment and learn from mistakes." The authors note that these skills, along with thinking processes like "observing, envisioning, innovating through exploration, and reflective self-evaluation," are valuable life long and among those needed for careers. The authors expand upon the value of each though process in the article.
One of the statements that struck me was "many people don't think of art class as a place where reflection is central, but instead as a place where students take a break from thinking." That was certainly my perception when I was in school. In fact, I eschewed visual art classes when I was in high school in favor of more serious subjects. (Though I was a member of the after school drama club.) Reading the study observations I realize I was learning more than I thought when I was younger.
The authors note that there are many possibilities for running classes in other subjects so that they cultivate the same thinking processes--and that many teachers already do so.
The big caveat I have for the article is essentially the one common to the entire education system these days. The schools which they studied to show how well the approach works are the type of schools where parents, students, teachers and administrators all contribute to a learning environment where the complex interactions necessary to implement this sort of curriculum can occur.
In a situation where there are antagonistic teacher-student and student-student relationships, great need for remediation and a host of negative external influences, it can be easier to look to standardized test scores as a of measure success.
Most likely the only way to prove that this view of arts education can be valid across the board is to sustain its presence right from the first grade when the fundamental relationships and expectations about what the educational process entails can be established with the students.
Easy to say and easy to start since all kids are pretty much sweeties in first grade. Much tougher to maintain 5th/6th grade onward when new realizations about Venus de Milo and Michaelangelo's David and life in general begin to develop.