Nonprofit Arts Organizations Research Articles

Age, Income, and Gender: Demographic Determinants of Community Theater Patronage

ABSTRACT As funds for nonprofit theatrical groups continue to dwindle, effective and efficient marketing strategies become even more critical. This paper investigates whether different consumer groups perceive different theatrical dimensions as more important in deciding whether or not to attend a local theatrical production. Data was collected from attendees of a musical production presented by a community theater group. Results suggest that distinct demographic segments find different tangible elements of the performance to be more or less important. The results have implications for community theater groups and other nonprofit arts organizations. Practical suggestions are made for enhancing the effectiveness of community theater marketing programs.

Resisting Invisibility

AbstractNonprofit arts organizations often struggle for visibility and survival. They may meet these challenges by adopting new marketing strategies, forming administrative alliances with other organizations, or creating programming that appeals to broader audiences. Though these tactics are indeed important, arts organizations must first develop a persistent presence in their communities. This article proposes five key ingredients of persistent presence for nonprofit arts organizations and suggests that persistent presence can be consciously constructed by an organization, by an artistic discipline, and by the larger arts community. The intent of this exploratory framework for persistent presence may guide arts administrators in their work and propel future research in this area.

Public Viewing of Descriptive Information about Nonprofit Arts Organizations

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsDavid R. StevensonDavid R. Stevenson is an associate professor in New Century College at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he serves as director of the undergraduate American Humanics program and director of research for the graduate Nonprofit Management program in the Department of Public and International Affairs.

Princes and Paupers: Network Ties and Financial Contributions Among Nonprofit Arts Organizations

ABSTRACT In the United States, nonprofit organizations are the primary vehicle through which wealthy patrons nurture arts and culture. They provide support for theatres, orchestras, operas, and ballet troupes of all sizes, as well as museums, galleries, zoos, and public radio and television stations. The survival of this subsector is dependent on the ability of individuals and foundations to raise and funnel money to the almost 7,000 nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in the United States. Nonprofit arts organizations have historically fared well during periods of financial constraint, in part because they have not depended heavily upon government subsidies. But another explanation for this stable funding picture may be the networks of overlapping board member and interpersonal ties of collegiality and friendship which characterizes the world of nonprofit arts organizations. We began our research with the idea that network position, particularly as measured by network centrality, is an important resource for nonprofit arts organizations. We hypothesized that the more central an arts organization is in the entire network of for-profit and nonprofit arts organizations in the community, the greater will be the level of support it can generate from local donors. We also hypothesized that the more wealthy a nonprofit arts organization, the more central it is likely to be in the entire network of for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Using an extensive database of almost 3,000 directors in the Louisville, Kentucky area, and special computer-based network analysis software packages, we were able to calculate the precise centralities of local arts organizations within a network of 149 organizations, corporations, and umbrella funding agencies. In order to determine the local financial support, we collected the 1990 IRS (Internal Revenue Service) Form 990 returns for nineteen of the twenty-five organizations (76%) we identified as active in the Louisville area. After determining organizational centrality, we did a bi-variate analysis between the centrality of an individual arts organization and total organizational wealth. What we found was that centrality is strongly associated with level of contributions and weakly associated with overall wealth. We believe that nonprofit arts organizations can take deliberate steps to maximize this resource by being aware of the other organizational (and social) ties of prospective directors.

Exploring structure‐effectiveness relationships in nonprofit arts organizations

AbstractThe authors examined nineteen nonprofit performing arts organizations, investigating the distribution of influence among organizational members, the grouping of volunteers and staff in organizational structures, and the effectiveness of the organizations. The organizations' effectiveness was assessed using multiple performance indicators. The analysis revealed five groupings or configurations of influence, which correlated to the organizations exhibiting the highest and lowest levels of organizational effectiveness. The authors conclude that a variety of structures are associated with good performance but structural dysfunctions are associated with organizational failure, and that members' commitment to an organization's structure is an important element of success.

A culturally appropriate cancer education program for African-American adolescents in an urban middle school.

This article describes an innovative transfer of cancer prevention information from a Comprehensive Cancer Center to the community and school setting. A cancer control curriculum, developmentally and culturally appropriate for middle school, African-American children, was taught to seventh grade students in a public middle school in a large, northeastern city. By building partnerships among a university, an academic medical center, a public school district, and a non-profit arts organization, students learned cancer control concepts in the context of their daily lives. Students increased their knowledge of cancer risk and demonstrated a positive attitude about their ability to affect their own health. Experience with this project enabled staff to identify additional education and support needs that exist among students who have family members with cancer.

Economic Challenges for the Fourth Generation University Theatre

Economie Challenges for the Fourth Generation University Theatre Kent Neely College and university educators are keenly aware of the current economic pressures which are causing tremendous shifts and changes in the manner in which they work. University theatre scholars and practitioners in particular experience an exacerbation of the problem. The current economic crisis affects university theatres especially hard, largely in part from a history of serving two constituencies, higher education and the professional theatre. Those two institutions grew rapidly over the last 30 years by relying upon deficit budgeting and an imbalanced exchange between services and population . As a result of this conflict, the university theatre can no longer sustain the quantitative productivity which characterized it in the past. For the purposes of this article, university theatres are defined as academic and practical programs of theatre study found in colleges and universities . The phrase "economic challenges" refers not to sales, earnings nor the means to those ends, but to the conditions that surround, and to the influences exerted upon, an enterprise by coincidence or design. Further, it presumes that these conditions and influences affect the existence of that enterprise through the supply and acquisition of human, financial and material resources and the use of those resources in the creation of a service: education. University theatre, now in its fourth generation, has developed within four distinct periods that parallel major changes in the United States economy, public policy and higher education.1 The first generation occurred near the turn of the century when George Pierce Baker began playwriting and study classes at Radcliffe in 1904, at Harvard in 1906 and finally at Yale in 1925. Baker's efforts were the first to indicate that the study and practice of theatre was a legitimate academic pursuit. The second generation began shortly thereafter and continued through the Second World War as colleges and universities "bootlegged" theatre courses 57 58 Kent Neely into curricula. Public speaking courses were thinly veiled efforts to teach acting; playwriting began to be taught in "workshops" and classes at places like the Carnegie Institute, Cornell, Northwestern and the University of Iowa. The third generation, after World War II and through the 1960s, was the boom time for higher education. The G.I. Bill enabled veterans to reenter acadame. The National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the Higher Education Facilities Act of 1963 funneled vast amounts of money into colleges and universities. The growth was unprecedented in the nation's history.2 The fourth generation began in the early 1970s when college and university funding and student populations changed dramatically. It has been further affected by the erosion of academic resources since 1980. For the past three years it has been hit hard by a major economic recession that Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman said is unlike any the country has previously experienced.3 Friedman noted that "because we have underinvested and overborrowed to such a great extent for the last dozen years, we have seriously impaired our country's long range growth prospects" (Meyers and Alters 16A). Friedman's observations apply to the fourth generation of university theatres and to professional theatres since the prior three decades are characterized by an overextension of education's and theatre's economic tools. Neither grew as a result of an equitable provision and exchange service based upon continuous market need or demand. Both have relied upon deficit budgeting while defining operations by growth objectives; a strategy which grew opportunistically and concurrently in both the university theatre and the professional theatre. An initial rupture occurred for both institutions in the early 1960s as more and more colleges and universities embraced art training as part of their missions. Consider a position speech delivered by W. MacNeil Lowry in 1961 to a conference of graduate deans. Lowry, then director of the Ford Foundation's Program of Humanities and the Arts, was a principal leader in the funding of non-profit arts organizations. He noted a dilemma in the shift of arts training programs into higher education and away from private institutes. The shift concerned him because it was inconsistent with the traditional college and university role as a place for the liberal education of the...

Nonprofit Enterprise in the Arts: Studies in Mission and Constraint.

Taking the dichotomy of nonprofit high culture and for-profit popular culture into consideration, this volume assesses the relationship between social purpose in the arts and industrial organization. DiMaggio brings together some of the best works in several disciplines that focus on the significance of the nonprofit form for our cultural industries, the ways in which nonprofit arts organizations are financed, and the constraints that patterns of funding place on the missions that artists and trustees may wish to pursue. Showing how the production and distribution of art are organized in the United States, the book delineates the differing roles of nonprofit organizations, proprietary firms, and government agencies. In doing so, it brings to the surface some of the special tensions that beset arts management and policy, the way the arts are changing or are likely to change, and the policy alternatives high culture faces.

Community arts facilities

The rapid growth of local community art's organizations and their need for appropriate facilities stimulated the incorporation of off-the-shelf research methods to organize a facility development process. With the aid of a demonstration grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a participatory process was initiated and tested with several communities that identified a need for arts' facilities. Beginning with a series of regional workshops co-sponsored with the NCAIA, North Carolina Art's Council, and North Carolina State University's Community Development Group, members of non-profit arts organizations, elected officials, planners, and architects were initiated into a process that included programme planning, design, and fund raising. Follow-up workshops focused on specific building projects and a staged process that started with assessing community needs, goal setting, building image, exploring site options, space planning, and building evaluation and management as essential ingredients for community arts facilities. The approach focused on self-managed environments where participation occurs in all phases of environmental change.

Ideals versus Dollars: Donors, Charity Managers, and Government Grants

This paper demonstrates how changes in untied, lump-sum government grants or income from unrestricted endowments will affect the behavior of charities operated by managers with strong philosophical or professional commitments. An increase in such funds will reduce the charity's accountability to private donors and lower its fund-raising activities. The grant will not be spent entirely on raising the quantity of output. Instead, it will permit the charity manager to reduce his or her dependence on the costly solicitation of donors who do not completely share the manager's preferences. In order to understand nonprofit charities one must recognize both their diversity and the independent role of their managers in furthering this diversity. We will miss much of their special character if we view them as mere conduits seeking faithfully to reify the wishes of their contributors.' In this paper I demonstrate how an increase or a fall in untied, lump-sum government grants or income from unrestricted endowments will affect the behavior of charities operated by managers with strong philosophical or professional commitments to some service mixes rather than others. An increase in such funds will reduce the charity's accountability to private donors and lower its fund-raising activities. The grant will not be spent entirely on raising