For the next few months, we will be using the alphabet as a novel way to unpack the many concepts of arts administration. Please join in. Thank you to the following arts administrators for adding ideas to the project:
- Ashley Thorndike-Youssef, Now Next Dance
- Fernando Maneca, BAX | Brooklyn Arts Exchange
- Hillary Kooistra, Abraham.In.Motion
- Kathryn Humphreys, Hubbard Street Chicago
- Katie Kruger, Shawl-Anderson Dance Center
- Liz Hitchcock Lisle, Shotgun Players
- Phyllis Haskell Tims, University of Utah (retired)
- Rebecca A. Ferrell, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
- Sarah Crowell, Destiny Arts Center
- Tammy Cheney, Lines Ballet
Arts administration relates to work at dance centers, arts councils, arts education programs, companies, and college programs. Please read on to explore the many and varied topics within arts administration. While not every topic applies to every setting, we hope that you will still find one or two ideas in the post that are useful and applicable to your particular setting. Please feel free to add ideas and links in the comments section below.
The letter F:
- Fundraising plan
- Financial procedures
- Field trips
- Founders
- Faculty and staff appreciation
- Flexible work schedules and hours
- Fiscal sponsorship
- “Filling the Buckets” protocol from Critical Friends Group
- Financial terms
- Facebook
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Let's unpack, consider, and reflect upon each one of these words. Even before reading further, you might want to take the list of 10 ideas here and simply journal for your organization. What do these words and phrases mean to you at your organization?
Fundraising Plan
An articulated and timelined fundraising plan creates the road map for the fiscal year. What are your goals for individual donations, corporate sponsorships, grants, and foundations? What does this money directly support? How can the work be divided up throughout a calendar year? And, do the staff understand this plan and the scale of it - to gain perspective and understand priorities?
Financial Procedures
Money in...money out...reimbursements...multiple eyes to support, to double-check, and to be accountable...
Hillary Kooistra, Company Manager for Abraham.In.Motion, recently noted:
Money is clearly a huge element of any administrator's life, which is why it is especially important for arts organizations to have sound financial procedures. In our company, we have systems in place for our administrative staff and dancers to request reimbursements, take out petty cash, and have large credit card charges approved. These checks and balances can be super simple (we use Google Sheets to track our petty cash, I use a smartphone app to submit my receipts to our Finance Manager, and we often simply correspond over email). The important thing is to be clear, transparent, and consistent - so everyone in the organization understands where and how the money is coming in and out.
Field Trips
For schools and dance studios, field trips are wonderful and inspiring for students, teachers, and families alike.
If you are a dance studio or center, can you help organize a few field trips each year? Together, you get to experience the power of vibrant, live performance. Also - for teaching staff - performances are indeed professional development. They inspire new curriculum and choreography.
For dance companies, theaters, and college dance departments - can you create a field trip opportunity for students to come to you? These build rich connections to foster future audience members and students.
Founders
Who created your organization? Are they still an active part of it?
If the Founders are still within the organization, do you have a plan for when they might retire or transition away from it? What other organizations and schools around your area, or nationally, can you turn to for advice and guidance to create your own transition plan?
If the Founder has since retired or passed away, how do you keep their spirit and work alive? How do employees and students get to know and remember these Founders?
Check out the "Living Transition Plan" document created by Dancers' Group in San Francisco:
http://dancersgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Dancers-Group-Living-Transition-Plan.pdf
Also, here is the announcement on Dance Place's website, as Founding Director Carla Perlo heads into retirement in 2017:
https://www.danceplace.org/top-news/executive-artistic-director-position-description/
Faculty and Staff Appreciation
Faculty and staff appreciation....what are the ways that you lead and offer this through your leadership? This manifests in verbal acknowledgements, thank you notes, and stipends/"bonuses" at the end of the year.
Any gesture is appreciated - an email thanking someone for pinch-hitting when a colleague fell ill, a verbal appreciation stated at the Monday staff meeting, or a $200 stipend at the end of the year as a small gesture of thanks.
Flexible Work Schedules and Hours
Based on your organization, what is the level of flexibility? What is the value of flexibility?
With working artists, can a flexible schedule allow time to rehearse and take class (while, of course, still getting their work done at your site)? I strongly believe that working artists are integral to our organizations on many levels.
Can a flexible work schedule allow for quiet time at home to do focused work, brainstorming, assessment, and planning? Can Google Docs allow for work anywhere, anytime?
And, conversely, if you feel that a traditional 9-5 schedule "in the office" is right for your organization, has that been articulated for all?
In 2017, we cannot deny that commute times and distance between home and workplace are growing larger and longer....
Fiscal Sponsorship
Banning Bouldin, Artistic Director of New Dialect in Nashville, TN, shared these financial thoughts in a previous blog post on January 19, 2016:
For New Dialect it has been important for us to develop streams of revenue that help offset our need for grant support and donations. If you’ve already started building your company then you know it’s expensive to rent studio space, pay dancers, cover production costs of performances, the list goes on. Ticket sales, a $5000 grant, and a kickstarter campaign very rarely cover all those costs. On top of this, in your first years as a nonprofit (if you choose to go that route), the grant support you're eligible for is significantly less than it will be once you have a three year financial history. (The big operational support comes when you have audited financial statements for the past three years.) So the question becomes, “How do we make it through our first three years?” Many companies and choreographers choose to opt for fiscal sponsorship in the beginning, so they don’t have to worry about maintaining a nonprofit. I agree that this is a good fit for some, but there’s a limit to how much you can expand under fiscal sponsorship. For us, becoming our own nonprofit from the very beginning has been essential to the success we’ve experienced. Our status enables us to accept donations and apply for grant support, in addition to offering classes and performances, all of which generate revenue for us and we don’t pay a percentage to anyone. I also can’t recommend highly enough developing a Board of Directors. Your Board can help you save money by volunteering to take care of responsibilities within their skill sets (accounting, legal work, etc.) They also help you to expand your network of financial support (at a certain point you’ll need to start asking more than the same 25 people for donations.) Since 2013 we’ve offered over 600 classes, hosted 8 choreographic residencies, and performed 30 times, and all of this while staying in the black and in a city where I was told repeatedly that it couldn’t happen. I’m here to tell you it can, if you have a sustainable business model, develop a team, and take the long view.
Here are some questions around fiscal sponsorship for your organization:
- Do you fiscally sponsor artists? If not, might you consider in the near future sponsoring a few artists? More and more dancers are choosing this route, versus 501c3 status...
- What percentage "fee" do you take on all income?
- Are the services and supports for the fiscally sponsored artists articulated for all?
- Does your Board understand fiscal sponsorship and how that affects your budget, liability, and income/expense statements that they are reviewing and analyzing?
“Filling the Buckets” Protocol from Critical Friends Group
If you are a fan of Liz Lerman's Critical Response Method, then I highly encourage you to check out the CFG work - Critical Friends Group. I myself am a trained facilitator in the work. The Critical Friends protocols developed out of K-12 public education as a way to have facilitated, thoughtful conversations around student work, curriculum, and events; they are structured formats for meetings, brainstorming sessions, and staff meetings. I feel that the work is applicable in a variety of settings - including arts organizations, dance companies, and college dance departments.
I was so excited about the work that I even wrote a protocol. It is called "Filling the Buckets," and it is a way to unpack and debrief after an event. This protocol can be used by many organizations - to assess a culminating event, student performance, festival, etc.
http://www.nsrfharmony.org/sites/default/files/2014.January.Connections.pdf
Financial Terms
While some staff members are primarily responsible for finances in your organization, is it still possible for everyone to have a basic understanding of these terms? Here is a small list to help get you started:
- gross income
- net income
- profit
- loss
- balance sheet
- restricted funds
- unrestricted funds
- matching funds
- endowment
- accrual accounting
- cash accounting
- "balanced" budget
- reserve
Facebook
Lastly, let's mention Facebook. Arts organizations, schools, and companies large and small can use this social media platform as a simple and easy tool to do marketing, PR, outreach, and fundraising. Beautiful, eye-catching photos are essential; a robust number of "likes" on your Page is necessary.
In a very positive way, social media has helped our cash-strapped dance community to offer new ways of promotion and dialogue free of charge. (Thank you, Mark Z....)
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The Letter A: Advertising, Advisory Committee/Advisory Board, advocacy, AEP email list, alumni, artist services vs serving artists, artists, arts administration masters degree programs, ArtsEdSearch, assessment, and audiences
The Letter B: Balancing, Board of Directors, board meetings, boardsource.org, booking, bookkeeping, books related to arts administration, brown bag lunch series for arts administrators, budgets, burnout, and business plan
The Letter C: Chairing a dance department, collaboration, colleagues, college level administration, committees, communication skills, community outreach, comparable organizations, Compasspoint trainings, compliance, conferences, conflict management, consensus building, consistent communication, consultants, contracts, Critical Friends Group, Critical Response Method, The Cycle by Michael M. Kaiser, and work as creative challenge
The Letter D: Dance/USA, Darren Walker, data, dealing with difficult people, decisionmaking process, delegating , development work, documenting conflict, and donors/donations/donation letters
The Letter E: Expenses, endowment, engagement, evaluations, educational programming/education department, Education Directors, employment law, and email plan
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