They produce a monthly magazine, AMERICAN THEATRE. There are copies in the main office and/or copier room in the department. Please take a moment to look at one this week as you are passing through.
Remember when we signed up for the ArtsJournal weekly or daily news on theatre (or were supposed to on the first week of class). Part of the reason was to help you know what is going on in the industry in an easy news feed (the New York Times mostly covers last week's content: commercial theatre)
A recent article in the LA Times covers the struggle of the 'big' theatres in the US (these are similar to Center Stage -- bigger than Everyman) http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-mcnulty-notebook-20120219,0,7909313.story As Americans, we seem to be caught up in the "it is so hard where we are right now' litany. I, however, see it as a great opportunity -- what do you see this opportunity to be?
Finally, as mentioned frequently, nonprofit arts organizations must serve their community (that's why they are nonprofits). The key phrase of the future is "sustainability." Is the system/organization able to sustain itself. A recent study of the Columbus arts community proved quite interesting in this arena. The full 104 page report is here (click to download). Part of their summary noted:
Situation Analysis
Building on work by WolfBrown in their January 2010 report on the Future of the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, we began our work by
extending their trend analysis over a 10 year period to document changes in the Columbus arts sector over two economic cycles.
Among key observations:
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There has been an aggregate loss of earned revenue in the sector, with a decline of 27.3%. ($4.8 million)
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Contributed revenue has increased, with individual giving having increased by 124.4%.
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Corporate contributions increased by only $285,000 (5.0%)
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Public sector support from all levels of government gained just $850,000 (23.3%)
• While some organizations contracted considerably over the past decade, there are a number of organizations that have
successfully grown or emerged.
• The largest organizations, in aggregate, have had no material gains in buying power over the past decade despite increased
budgets.
• There has been increased competition in the local entertainment sector with a substantial number of new venues and
organizations having opened in the past decade.
Understanding Change
Nationally, the arts and culture sector has experienced change that mirrors some of the trends in Columbus, including:
• A decline in participation of benchmark arts activities (classical music, opera, ballet, dramatic plays) by as much as 30% since
1982.
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Arts philanthropy ranking in 7th place of ten charitable organization categories for the past decade.
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Non‐profit theatre companies experiencing stagnant buying power over the past decade.
Locally, Columbus has not changed much demographically over the past ten years though there are some economic indicators which
are of concern. In particular, Columbus has seen less net growth in the number of business firms and fewer new small business
establishment which correlates with slower growing economies. In addition, Columbus’s GDP has grown at a slower rate than the
average of all U.S. metropolitan areas. While these areas are of concern, Columbus 2020!, a regional economic development plan,
outlines an aggressive plan to build the local economy, centered around three key strategies:
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Retain and expand the companies and industries that call Central Ohio home today
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Attract major employers to establish operations in Central Ohio
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Create more commercial enterprises by leveraging our tremendous research assets and entrepreneurs
There is a strong consensus among community leaders that Columbus’s arts sector can and should play an important role in
achieving these goals by:
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Contributing to Columbus’ competitiveness by helping to tell the Columbus story
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Aligning with broad community goals
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Pursuing partnerships with business, government, education, sports, tourism and entertainment
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Achieving further efficiency and right‐sizing by promoting strong management practices...that align with community capacity and
Benchmarking
One of the key outputs of our analysis is to test whether Columbus’s arts sector is right‐sized and sustainable. Central to this
consideration is exploring what a robust and reliable sector looks like, including the capitalization necessary to succeed. As we
pursued the notion of sustainability, we needed to better define measures or indicators of “right‐sized” through field research and
stakeholder conversations. It quickly became apparent to us that sustainability is a place on a continuum of operating outcomes.
There are distinct levels; each reflecting different degrees of organizational health, capacity and required capitalization – whether in
an individual organization or the arts sector as a whole. The three levels we have defined for this project are:
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“Viable” – the capability to function in the short‐term, but limited in the capacity to adapt and grow
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“Sustainable” – the ability to meet present needs, but also to generate enough resources to deliver on mission in changing environment
• “Vital” – access to sufficient resources to allow the organization to fulfill its mission, reinvest in its future, and maximize its public value by evolving to meet future needs2
With these definitions in mind, we developed an index system with 14 indicators spread among these five categories:
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Attendance and Market
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Contributed Income
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Human Capital
- Assets5. Product
How do you understand their view of the situation? Why are those 5 categories of indicators important to the nonprofit arts sector?
