Harvesting the Arts
The Chronicle of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Finance Fund are hosting a special series of discussions to help nonprofits address challenges during this recession.
This week’s topic was New Ways for Arts Organizations to Finance Their Operations. There was an interesting conversation about the ideas of mergers and new ways to raise revenue.
Generating Revenue
Clara Miller: Starting up and growing a new line of business requires investment all its own, and may take years to actually contribute net revenue to operations. And earned revenue is the lion’s share of most arts orgs’ revenue now. I have seen a variety of creative approaches to wringing more net revenue out of the current business platform:
Examples cited by Clara Miller and Holly Sidford:
- “Meet the artist” salons and other forms of patron engagement
- Deploying artists into the community in various venues (hospitals, schools, etc.)
- Partnerships with business, universities, etc
- 2 for 1 tickets
- Pay-as-you-can admissions
- Free outdoor events with a pass-the-hat request for donations
- Special deals for members and subscribers (perks like free parking, better seats, meet the artists opportunities, free admission to other events)
What ideas is your organization trying to boost revenue?
Mergers and Strategic Collaborations
Clara Miller: From a purely practical perspective, sharing performance space or tech equipment, for example, can be challenging because the nights when ticket sales are highest tend to be the same, and times when rehearsal is needed is similarly clustered. I think that “neutral” platforms–those run commercially, sometimes as cooperatives themselves–are worth looking into because they are already scaled, and actually large enough to benefit from economies of scale–two (or even 12) small arts organizations may get some scale economics, but internal complexity will be problematic in reaching true economies, and will require new skill sets and systems to be built.
Holly Sidford: Arts groups ought to look for opportunities to economize on shared services with non-arts organizations as well as arts groups…it may be more difficult for two arts groups in a given discipline to combine forces than for arts groups to collaborate across discipline lines (dance and theater, for example, or music and dance), or to combine with educational, social service or even health organizations.
An example from the discussion:
The Great Lakes Music Festival, the Eisenhower Dance Ensemble and the Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings, share physical space, marketing staff, and development staff, and accounting among other numerous functions.
More resources and ideas about nonprofit collaborations:
- Fieldstone Alliance’s Tools You Can Use: Engagement Strategies: Making the Most of Working Together
- Foundation Center’s From the Answer Desk: What do I need to know about collaboration and other kinds of strategic alliances?
Other Artful Resources
- Springboard for the Arts - check out their delicious account for great resources, and an example of how an organization can aggregate and share information
- smArts & Culture (If you’re on twitter, follow Maryann)