No One Knows You’re A Non-Profit (Sometimes Even After You Tell Them)

While it has sort of been generally known that visitors to arts and cultural organizations aren’t fully aware of whether the organization is a non-profit or not, Colleen Dilenschneider recently posted research that qualifies just how few visitors are able to make that distinction, (subscription required) what the implication of that lack of knowledge is, and how to reverse that perception. Basically, even the disciplines with the best levels of awareness of non-profit status don’t ...

A.D.E.I has to be more than checking a box

My colleague and frequent collaborator Ann Marie Sorrell is fond of saying that engagement with diverse communities must be more than “checking a box” and she’s absolutely correct.  Ann Marie and I are long-time collaborators in this work, starting with a multi-year initiative many years ago at Palm Beach Opera. As National Black Business Month has just concluded, I’m reminded of an article in The New York Times which brought this concept to the front ...

Show Me What You Love About The Arts Without Using Pictures Of The Arts

Advisory Board for the Arts sponsored a webinar discussing how Utah Symphony shifted its marketing focus to emphasize emotional factors and shared values.  Karen Freeman, Executive Director of Research at Advisory Board for the Arts, observed that this approach can be effective because “people make choices based on emotional factors but justify it with rational considerations.”  Essentially, how this might manifest is you may choose what car to purchase based on an emotional association but ...