Arts Intranet

Remember the good old days of marketing? When a catchy phrase and a few colors were all you needed? When dancing popcorn and soda would convince you that you did, in fact, need a treat from the lobby? Those days are long gone. Modern marketing is a battlefield, a war for attention. Rest, even for a moment, and you’re lost in a sea of digital combatants. Sure, there is room for error because enough information is being pushed out all of the time that your mistakes will most likely be forgotten. Or will they?

Danielle Williams

Now that you’ve decided that you need a new website, figured out your audiences, and garnered support from your leadership and staff, you should be ready to select a team of professionals to help you with the website overhaul process. There are very few organizations who can completely handle a web redesign in-house, so it’s important to have great partners who can help you through this project.

At Americans for the Arts, our Marketing, Communications and Technology Department includes a Vice President, a 5-person Marketing and Communications team, a 3-person Web team, and a 5-person Database and internal IT team. Though our entire 70-person staff played part in this project (as we detail later in this blog salon!), our Web team and VP were primary, working with our external vendors and with a good deal of content help from Marketing and Communications.

Business Volunteers for the Arts® (BVA) is a national skills-based management consulting program operated by a network of organizations across the country under the leadership and coordination of Americans for the Arts. It pairs nonprofit arts groups with specially trained business executives who volunteer their time and skills to assist with distinct management projects. Though the number of active BVAs has fallen slightly in the past year, those still operating them are running robust programs that seek to fill an active need in the communities in which they operate, both for the arts organizations receiving pro bono support and the businesses that encourage their employees to give their time and skills to the arts.

Let's talk about starting a revolution. For rising arts leaders, we have a unique time period when our voices are not only valuable and needed as employees, but also make up a desired audience. Many of our institutions want to engage the young professionals and, hey, that's us! The world is changing and our organizations are trying, desperately, to catch up. The idea of "audience engagement" seems to be subjective but constantly discussed in our industry as a must-have. But what would be the best way to bridge our work with our peers?

It’s no surprise that my #NAMPC coaching sessions about creating surveys are always filled. When it comes to surveying, you, like most people, probably have the most trouble with simply getting started. These five tips should help you, if you do them in order.

1.Set your objectives.

What’s the real purpose of your survey? Your first step should always be getting clear on what your results will be used for and who will use them. Questions to ask yourself:

Will results be used internally or externally?

What decisions can be made based on your survey results?