Focus Areas
Marketing, Legal Issues, Operations (backstage and front of house), Arts Presenting and Producing, Business Models, Outdoor Festivals Presenting Contemporary Indigenous Artists, Arts and Technology, Leadership in the Arts, Collaboration (between organizations, communities, artists-all permutations), Professional Development and Training, Organizational Culture, Volunteers, University Arts Environments
About
I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice. I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/) My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA. Among the things I am most proud include leveraging the architecture of The Grand to provide safe programming during Covid, producing a devised work to explore ways to address blight that didn’t involve bulldozing, producing an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii’s snow goddess Poli’ahu.
I have been trying to think of subjects to address on ArtsHacker, but my goal is to create entries that are relatively evergreen and with Covid, I feel like so much is being rewritten in terms of process and expectation. I think the addition of Eric Rubio is awesome. He is preaching to the choir when he talks about keeping your books up to date as you rather than scrambling at the end of the year or during an audit.
Connect With Joe
Article Archive
For decades now there has been a belief that the lower the ratio of non-profit’s overhead expenses to program expense, the better run the non-profit is. As a result, a low overhead ratio has been viewed as something of a virtue and non-profit organizations have used all sorts of accounting tricks and parsed terminology in an effort to redefine what constitutes an overhead expense. Likewise, funders have rewarded non-profits who can exhibit…
When things have been going poorly for an organization and they seek a fresh start, (perhaps upon emerging from a national epidemic), the impulse is often to rebrand. However, in a Marketing Week piece, Mark Ritson, argues for a revitalization rather than rebranding. Ritson argues that even if you feel public perception is so bad there is a need to start over from square one, there is actually quite a bit of…
There has been a growing campaign internationally in the non-profit/charity sectors over recent years for employers to include a salary range when conducting job searches rather than utilizing vague terms like “competitive” or commensurate with experience.” The Show The Salary website was started in the UK, but people in the United States and Canada have taken up the cause. People like Nonprofit AF blogger Vu Le frequently make Twitter posts directed at…
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…
The upheaval of the past year in terms of public health, politics, social equity and other areas of concern have made it clear that a new operating environment will emerge, shaped by a changing set of expectations. Many organizations are recognizing that the composition of their governing board needs to be adjusted in order to better reflect the composition of the constituencies the organization serves or simply provide advice and guidance in…
In mid-December 2020, LaPlaca Cohen and Slover Linett Audience Research released an analysis of the data they collected in the Covid edition of the CultureTrack survey through the lens of race and ethnicity. The three broad categories of change the survey results indicated are: • Becoming more inclusive and community-centered is the most widely desired category and includes greater diversity of voices and faces, greater focus on localness (local artists, local nonprofits,…
Even pre-Covid the general guidance for promotional images and text was to focus on the audience experience. Regardless of whether the venue you perform/show your work at is allowed to open, that is doubly true now. Except that in the past you would want to depict many people enjoying an experience in close proximity to each other. The focus now is on a safe experience over a raucous, energizing experience. While that…
Yes, Data Driven Decision Making. But What Data Is Important?
There is a big push, correctly, for arts organizations to employ data driven decision-making processes. However, not all data is of equal value. Colleen Dilenschneider recently made a good post separating data into diagnostic metrics, key performance indicators and vanity metrics. The most valuable data for an organization is key performance indicators (KPIs). Most data points are diagnostic metrics which, while valuable, support KPIs rather than measure progress toward organizational goals. Vanity…
Recently, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the union which has members working in performing arts venues, convention centers, movies, and television productions, recently released their Covid-19 reopening guide. If you work in an environment that employs IATSE members, it is worth reviewing the guidelines to get a sense of what the union expects working conditions to look like. By and large, the guidance on the first 19 pages doesn’t differ…
In an earlier entry, I had written about meeting the legal duty of care and planning to re-open your venue as Covid-19 restrictions are relaxed. It is good to be aware of legal duty of care as a general concept because it exists entirely independent of diseases concerns and is applicable to every aspect of an organization’s operations and decision making. As plans evolve, there are myriad questions that arise about the…
In another post, we had shared some general guidance provided by the Downtown Professionals Network for re-opening arts and cultural venues as Covid-19 restrictions ease up. The Event Safety Alliance, which is comprised of over 300 professionals from live event venues of all sizes, has recently issued a Reopening Guide that provides much more detailed guidance in this regard. While it is focused on live events, a great deal of the content…
As live-streaming performances moves from being quickly assembled, impromptu performances organizations were using to keep connected with audiences during Covid-19 quarantine toward being a consistent mode of content delivery for individuals and organizations, there are some important legal issues to consider. Please note, these legal considerations are the same regardless of your motivations. Even if you have live streamed content before without issue, there is likely to be more attention paid and…
If you are looking for advice on best practices for arts and cultural entities once they are allowed to re-open, Downtown Professionals Network (DPN) has created a website specifically focused on this topic called Reopen Main Street. The advice is broken down by types of business so arts and culture has its own devoted section. Since restrictions on public interactions vary across the country, there is guidance for both live and virtual…
Do Your By-laws Allow For Online Meetings? If you live in the United States, you may remember there was much ado when members of the House of Representatives had to return to Washington D.C. to approve a coronavirus relief package because the U.S. Constitution requires in-person voting. Any sort of vote conducted in another manner was vulnerable to a challenge. Similarly, if the bylaws of your non-profit don’t allow for virtual meetings…
Handling Contractual Elements of Event Cancellations Due To Epidemics & Other Crises
As event cancellations have started to mount due to the growing number of Covid-19 cases around the country, there has been a lot of concerned conversation occurring about the invocation of force majeure clauses in performance contracts. If you are not aware of its application, the clause generally relieves all parties of their contractual obligation due to severe weather, natural disasters, civil unrest, government declarations, union actions and epidemics. I say generally…
On my personal blog, I have written about the problem of ticketing websites that masquerade as legitimate performance venues and either sell fake or highly marked up tickets. I have to say that Google seems to have addressed the problem of resellers and scam sites appearing in search results before the real venue. For example, if you search for Bill Maher Atlanta today, the Fox Theatre is the first result. On Bing,…
A few years back I made a post addressing the assumption that ex officio positions on a board of directors were automatically non-voting. Spoilers: That is not the case. Apropos to that, I recently became aware of a 2009 law in California that prohibits non-profit organizations from having non-voting directors. I wasn’t aware that such restrictions existed anywhere so check the laws in your state. Thus, a nonprofit corporation may not have…
Toward Crafting Better Conflict Of Interest Policy And Practice
As the world becomes more connected, rules and regulations governing conflicts of interest associated with geographic boundaries start to lose their relevance. Broader definitions and applications of a board member’s duty to a non-profit are required. This is the view of David O. Renz in an excellent guide on non-profit conflicts of interest on Non-Profit Quarterly. Renz compares the conflict of interest policy of the United States, which is focused narrowly in…
Three years ago, I wrote an entry about non-profits and open meeting laws. In the last year or so, people have been posting a lot of questions on that post about the laws governing different states. In the interest of helping people out, I have been trying to do research and provide answers. But as I note in pretty much every answer I give, I am basically just doing Google searches to…
Conversations around performances and events really can enhance the experience for people, but making it an effective and enjoyable experience can take some preparation and discipline. One of my favorite pieces on the practice was written for HowlRound by Brant Russell reflecting on his experience leading the discussions at Steppenwolf Theatre. He presented 11-ish rules that were basically aimed at having the moderator employ the lightest touch while also keeping the discussion…