Editor-In-Chief

Drew McManus

Arts Consulting

“I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired.”

Those were the first words out of an executive’s mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house. I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight.

So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals “aggressively embracing career change” but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why. In short, it doesn’t matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can’t keep your own clients out of the ground, and I’m fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I’ve done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

Technology

 but don’t let that title fool you into thinking he’s just a tech geek. He brings 20 years of global broad-based arts consulting experience to the table and helps clients break the cycle of choosing one-size-fits-none solutions and instead, deliver an option that allows them to get ahead of the tech curve instead of trying to catch up by going slower.

With the vision of legacy support strategy and the delights of creative insights, his mission is to deliver a sophisticated next generation technology designed especially for our business. The first step in that journey began in 2010 when he released The Venture Platform, a purpose-designed managed website development solution designed especially for arts organizations and artists.

His expertise spans across multiple sectors and regularly quoted as an industry expert in media outlets including New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and The Chronicle of Philanthropy along with more than 100 additional newspapers, trade journals, and magazine outlets. Broadcast appearances include NPR’s All Things Considered, NPR’s Weekend Edition and MPR’s Morning Edition

As a sought-after speaker and panelist, he has worked with  Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network, Opera America, Americans for the Arts, National Arts Marketing Project Conference, Southeastern Theatre Conference, National Performing Arts Conference, and Chamber Music America. He’s been a featured lecturer at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Bolz Center for Arts Administration, Northwestern University School of Music, Eastman School of Music, and Arizona State University. In 2011, he was featured presenter for Chicago’s TEDx Michigan Ave conference.

For fun, he writes a daily blog about the orchestra business, provides a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, leads a team of intrepid arts pros to hack the arts, founded a free arts admin jobs board, and loves a good coffee drink.

Drew McManus Poise

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An Arts Manager’s Guide To Combating Ghost Referral Spam In Google Analytics

An Arts Manager’s Guide To Combating Ghost Referral Spam In Google Analytics

Among the many types of spammers that have cropped up over the course of the last year, one of the … Read more
Material Design

Begin Thinking About User Experience As Your Brand

Does your organization still design print material first then use that as the basis for your online design? If so, … Read more
Say click here again.

Get Rid Of These Three Common Design And Content Mistakes Once And For All

It isn’t as though arts managers have loads of time to stay current on the latest trends and best practices … Read more
matchmaker

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A (Font) Match

For many performing arts orgs, January means you’re knee deep into next season’s design stage and for those of you who … Read more
2016 resolutions

10 Resolutions Every Arts Manager Should Make For Better Data Driven Decisions In 2016

2016 is the year for ridding your institution of as much HiPPO decision making as possible. Even if you aren’t … Read more

ArtsHacker’s (Really) Last Minute Gift Guide For Arts Managers

It’s December 23rd and the staff office party is in four hours but you still haven’t picked up a Secret … Read more
MailChimp New Resize RSS feed images to fit template option

If You Use MailChimp RSS Campaigns You’re Going To Want This Information

Recently, email marketing provider MailChimp added a new option to their RSS campaigns that aims to solve a long (long) … Read more
#1 ranked NAMPC 2015 session

It’s Official: Click Click Done Was The #1 RANKED SESSION Among #NAMPC 2015 Attendees!

We are so pleased to learn that the Click.Click.Done. Developing Your Google Analytics Skills session at the 2015 National Arts … Read more
pronunciation guide

Did You Know Facebook Can Tell People How To Pronounce Your Name?

Although there are no shortages of annoyances whenever Facebook rolls out new features, every now and then they offer up … Read more
Arts Hacker Year in Review 2015

Today Marks Arts Hacker’s One Year Anniversary!

Hard to believe it’s been a full year since ArtsHacker’s launch but today marks the one-year mark since the inaugural … Read more
#GratefulArtsAdmin

What We’re Thankful For As Arts Administrators

In a field where it can become all too easy to feel the pressures of the day to day grind, we sometimes forget to take a step back and acknowledge the things we’re grateful for. To that end, I asked our ArtsHackers to share a few of the things they are grateful for as arts administrators during this Thanksgiving season. I hope this lets you learn a little bit more about who we are and our respective outlooks on the field.[
Spoiler: there’s a good section in the article that draws on lessons from the medical field.

Become An Arts Admin Jedi By Mastering The Art Of Getting Things Done @Americans4Arts #ARTSBlog

If you haven’t been following it already, Americans for the Arts blog salon on arts marketing started up last week … Read more
How To Make Images Behave Inside Mailchimp RSS Campaign Templates

How To Make Images Behave Inside Mailchimp RSS Campaign Templates

NOTE: be sure to check out this article published after this one with updated information and a new option Mailchimp provides to … Read more
Creating An Effective Non-Responder Strategy For MailChimp

Creating An Effective Non-Responder Strategy For MailChimp

One of the most frustrating and expensive problems arts managers deal with is email subscriber inactivity and no matter how … Read more
Begin Chronicling Your Season Using A Year-In-Review Microsite

Begin Chronicling Your Season Using A Year-In-Review Microsite

Although it’s fairly common practice for the commercial sector, arts orgs haven’t really caught on to the Year-In-Review (YiR) microsite … Read more

Step Up From Collaborating To Co-Authoring In MS Word 2016

It took them long enough but the folks in Redmond have finally made real-time co-author editing part of Microsoft Word. … Read more

There’s More Than One Way To Hack The Arts

ArtsHacker currently includes a mix of original articles and aggregated posts (content that points out a useful resource elsewhere but … Read more

Are You Experiencing A WordPress Menu Bug Inside Chrome? If So, Here’s The Fix

If you’re running the most recent version of Google’s Chrome browser and you’re a WordPress user, you may be noticing … Read more