Conference Reviews: Part 3

Partnerships

As resources continue to contract at an alarming rate, arts organisations continue to quest for the Holy Grail of solutions that will help carry them through difficult times. They soon discover that they are not alone on this quest as they encounter other organisations along the way that share similar values and similar challenges. These organizations discover that by banding together, they can achieve goals that they would not achieve on their own. Thus, various ‘alliances’ and ‘partnerships’ are formed in hopes of making the journey easier.

The impetus for these partnerships can be both internal and external. In some cases, organisations take it upon themselves to seek out potential partners with similar missions to their own. In other cases, funders encourage organisations to come together with the promise of funding their collaborative effort. Results in both cases are often mixed, with some initiatives being very successful and others not faring so well, illustrating that partnerships are not always the answer.

Nevertheless, “partnerships” and “strategic alliances” have become the two buzz terms in the nonprofit world of late. Over the past few months, two conferences in New York City have focused on this theme, bringing a bevy of practitioners and consultants to town to herald their successes and warn of potential pitfalls.


National Arts Marketing Conference (NAMC)
CollaborACTION! Arts Marketing and Sponsorship Partnerships that Work
National Arts Marketing Conference (NAMC)
Presented by the Arts & Business Council Inc. and ArtsReach
Sponsored by American Express, The National Endowment for the Arts and Altria.
April 12–15, 2003
New York

An all-star line-up of arts marketing professionals converged on Times Square in mid-April to share their collaborative experiences with their peers from across the country. This was the second NAMC conference, following the successful 2001 event in San Francisco. However, in light of the current economic environment, conference registration and participant morale were both significantly lower than they were at the last conference.

Panels covered a wide range of issues surrounding the theme of collaboration as individuals presented case studies on community partnerships, private/non-profit collaborations and joint research initiatives. Here are some of the highlights:

Community Collaboration

Tom Kaiden, Deputy Director of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (GPCA), described the success of PhillyFunGuide.com[14], a joint marketing initiative launched by GPCA in October 2002, aimed at developing a master schedule of information on upcoming cultural events in Philadelphia.

The schedule was designed for use by consumers, institutions and media outlets in hopes of creating a central location to find/list cultural events that are happening in the area. The website also provides users the option to sign up for “PhillyFunSavers”, a last-minute ticket discount programme similar to the e-saver model developed by the airlines.

The initiative has been very successful, with the website attracting over 40,000 unique visitors each month and PhillyFunSaver membership growing at a rate of over 1000 new registered users each week.

Private/Non-profit Partnerships

Dionne Rogers, Director of Market Development for American Express Company in Washington DC and Maggie Boland, Director of Institutional Advancement at Arena Stage spoke about American Express College Nights, a programme aimed at developing younger audiences for the theatre. On select nights during the run of a show, Arena Stage offers $10 tickets to college students. American Express subsidized this programme with a grant totalling $125,000 over two years.

Arena Stage’s goal is to build an audience of future theatre attenders, though not necessarily Arena Stage attenders. The company realizes that many of the students who come through the programme will move on to other cities, but it hopes that they will take their love of the theatre with them, moving from single ticket buyer to subscriber to donor and eventually maybe even board member. American Express has similar aspirations, hoping to build a base of future Amex cardholders. The co-branding opportunity also provides Amex additional exposure to the college demographic.

This programme’s success lies in its use of student ambassadors and their use of guerrilla marketing tactics to recruit audience members from various college campuses in the DC area. Student ambassadors are given a subscription to Arena’s season in exchange for their commitment of time and effort to make the programme a success. They are also invited to special events and galas so that they feel like they are an important part of the Arena family. The ambassadorships have become much sought after and graduating ambassadors carefully select their successors.

Joint Market Research

Ellen Salpeter, Director of Heart of Brooklyn[15] (HOB), A Cultural Partnership, spoke about the value of joint market research, using results from their recent study[16] to illustrate the power of partnership.

In the spring of 2002, the HOB Board of Directors, comprised of senior staff members from each institution, got together to refine what they knew about their collective audience. They pooled information from past individual research initiatives to create a knowledge resource for the consortium. This survey of materials helped HOB pinpoint specific areas that needed further exploration and enabled them to develop a set of key research questions that were of overall importance to the consortium as a whole.

Almost 2000 visitors to HOB attractions were intercepted in the fall of 2002, creating an audience profile that included information on the types of activities visitors liked, which attractions visitors bundled and which institutions were entry-points to other institutions in the consortium. HOB has since used this information to develop new marketing initiatives, including a monthly HOB calendar with suggested visitor itineraries and neighbourhood outreach programmes.

Thomas E. Backer, PhD
Partnership as an Art Form: What Works and What Doesn’t in Nonprofit Arts Partnerships

At Monday’s lunch session, Dr. Tom Backer presented highlights from his newly completed study[17] on collaborations and partnerships in the arts. The focus of the discussion was on what could be learned about partnerships, reasons for partnering now and what to be cautious of when entering into partnerships.

Throughout his presentation, Dr. Backer stressed that partnering was not always the answer to the problem. In the current economic climate, many partnerships are being born out of necessity with mixed results. In some cases, partnerships are successful at achieving economies of scale by combining facilities, resources and knowledge. Other hastily created partnerships suffer from malaise and planning fatigue with no tangible results.

In his view, successful partnerships are based on systematic planning, awareness of potential power struggles or organisational history that might impede the process, willingness to invest money, time and human resources, learning from other existing case examples and coming up with long term goals for sustainability.

[14] http://www.artsmarketingconference.org/handouts/kaiden_PhillyFunSaversCaseStudy.ppt
[15] HOB is comprised of six institutions situated near Prospect Park and includes The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, The Brooklyn Public Library, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Prospect Park Alliance and the Prospect Park Zoo
[16] http://www.artsmarketingconference.org/handouts/salpeter_WhyGoItAlone.ppt
[17] http://www.humaninteract.org/images/hiri_b25.pdf