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

Connect

Unleash Your Data Driven UX Superhero With This ArtsU Webinar & Discount Code

I’m very happy to announce that on Friday, September 27, 2019 I’ll be leading an Americans for Arts ArtsU webinar … Read more

Add Context To Your Google Analytics Data Using Annotations

One of the best kept secrets in Google Analytics hiding in plain sight are annotations, which are little notes you … Read more

2019 ArtsReach Slide Deck

We’re all about sharing the love, and wanted to share a copy of the session slide deck from our 2019 … Read more

Turn Lists Into Columns With A Little CSS Magic

One of the most common content management frustration points I find clients encounter is finding an attractive way to display … Read more

New Research Into Nonprofit Staff Compensation

There’s an excellent article in the 6/12/2019 edition of fastcampny.com by Ben Paynter that examines two recent studies on nonprofit … Read more

Effective And Affordable Website User Testing

Whether it’s your website, email marketing templates, or landing pages, user testing is a critical step toward the end of … Read more

If You’re Using Slack And Need Project Management Functionality, You Need Workast

One of the best trends in software and app development is the rise of offerings designed to integrate with other … Read more

Fingerprint And Face ID Authentication FINALLY Comes To Lastpass

One of the first lines of defensive in a good cybersecurity hygiene is maintaining strong passwords. Technically, May 2, 2019 … Read more

Website Policies: Which Ones You Need And Why They Matter 2019

A little more than two years ago, we took some time to review the type of website policies your organization … Read more

Press Kits: What Arts Orgs Actually Want

Press kits are easy, all it takes is making some photos and a pdf bio available then call it a … Read more

How A Healthy Data Driven Culture Energizes Healthy UX

I recently wrapped up a workshop for Americans for the Arts and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts on Website User … Read more

Let’s Talk About Arts And Technology

Mark your calendar: Thursday, April 18, 2019 from 12:30-2:00pm CT I’ll be taking part in Arts Alliance Illinois’ ARTS MOVE … Read more

GA Skills For Creating A Data Driven Culture: Secondary Dimensions

One of the most popular sections of the data driven culture session I co-presented at the 2019 Nonprofit Technology Conference … Read more

The Latest List Of Google Analytics Must Have Settings And Configurations

I’m attending #19NTC (the Nonprofit Technology Conference) in Portland, OR this week and in addition to a presenting a session … Read more

WordPress Plugin Review: Carbon Copy Menu Duplicator

Giveaway alert: submit your email to win a free one-year, one-site license for the plugin in this review. Who doesn’t love simple? But when it comes to some content management tasks inside WordPress, simple can get complicated in a real hurry. Case in point, duplicating menus. While WordPress makes it easy to create multiple menus, there’s no default functionality to duplicate an existing menu. That means if you find yourself in a position where you need to make a copy of a menu, you must rebuild it from scratch, which can become double the hassle if you have a lot of custom link items or use custom classes.

Activate Google Signals And Slurp Up Even More Of That Sweet Google Juice

Google Signals provides the framework for tracking signed in users across devices, such as multiple browsers, mobile apps, mobile devices, … Read more

Orchestra & Opera Workplace Satisfaction: Winter 2019

The latest installment in the bi-annual series at my orchestra business blog that measures workplace satisfaction ratings of arts managers … Read more

Understanding The Difference Between Cloud Based and Hosted Software And Apps

An increasing amount of the time spent working with clients via my web development firm is understanding the differences between … Read more

Most Personality Quizzes Are Junk Science. Here’s One from @FiveThirtyEight That Isn’t. Let’s See How Arts Admins Stack Up.

If you’re a data nerd then you almost certainly know about FiveThirtyEight.com, statistician Nate Silver’s number-crunching hub of data goodness. … Read more

Leveling Up Your WCAG Skills With Kontrast Chrome Extension

In November, 2018 we examined how you can move toward better web accessibility by focusing on improved color contrast. If … Read more