The making of an effective arts board
"Furtherance of mission" is the key to everything. The legal responsibility of the volunteer board is to ensure that resources are directed to the mission that earned the tax-exempt status. The job is to protect the mission. The Board is drawn from the community, not from the theater, because its responsibility is to the community. Financial oversight, fundraising, donating, and hiring staff leadership are all important roles of trustees. But none can be carried out effectively if furthering the purpose of the organization isn't kept front and center.
Serving the community means that the best boards operate like a huge deep dish antenna, facing out to the community — receiving information about the community they serve and transmitting information about the theater they represent. How the board deals with what it hears and how the board transmits what it knows determines the reach, scope, vision, and potential of the organization. If that deep dish turns inward on the organization, the result can kill any forward momentum. And the community is the victim.
Over the years, I've developed some identifiable traits of the boards that inspire the best work of staff and build great organizations for their communities.
- Trustees understand the mission; know their goals and keep their eyes on the prize.
- Collectively and individually, trustees work with the staff as partners.
- Individual trustees assume personal responsibility for collective decisions.
- Board and staff discussions are open, sometimes heated, but always directed toward a unified position.
- Ideas are both welcomed and scrutinized, in an effort to be both creative and effective in addressing problems.
- Obstacles and disappointments become triggers for creative problem solving and renewed focus on priorities.
- Problems are analyzed with some depth before solutions are discussed.
- The board garners valuable information from the community and drives the organization to strengthen itself with that information.
- The board constantly evaluates its own success, evaluates the suitability of its own composition to the challenges at hand, and addresses its weakness.
- The trustees expect themselves and the staff to enjoy the process of building a great theater for a great community.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Aug 28, 10:33 a.m. inappropriate
Bravo!: Susan Trapnell's comments should be required reading for all who serve on non profit boards, in and out of the arts. Such volunteer work comes from the heart, but as with anything that is worthwhile, it is also a commitment of mind and body.
Posted Thu, Aug 28, 10:41 a.m. inappropriate
Excellent piece: Trapnell's article is excellent and should be shared with every not-for-profit arts and cultural organization in town. My own 30 year career in managing arts and cultural organization leads me to nearly identical conclusions. I now have the priviledge of serving on boards and find that Trapnell's list of good characteristics applies the boards of social service organizations, museums and cultural organizations of every type. Putting this conversation in the context of our local theaters is timely and appropriate for Crosscut. The conclusions are, however, far reaching and should be understood in the broader context of the uniquely American not-for-profit board.
Posted Fri, Aug 29, 9:08 a.m. inappropriate
Trapnell's are a bunch of tired platitudes: the likes of which are typical for Seattle and a theater scene which produces nothing of national note, nothing leaves Seattle, except some artistic directors who come here, take a sniff ,and depart as quickly as is feasible. Trapnell's is the kind of "process" prose and thinking guaranteed to produce mediocrity. Money won't buy you happiness nor will it buy you theater that is half way central in importance to people's lives.
Posted Fri, Aug 29, 10:23 a.m. inappropriate
Response to mikerolm (sp?): Ya sound a little bitter there Mike--- get a grant request turned down?
I thought Susan's article was clear and insightful. An interesting glance into the workings of a non-profit for those not used to the non-profit world, and a level headed assesment for those who want their non-profits to work. With 25 some odd years in the non-profit arts sector, I've come to understand that its always a balancing act between visnonary artistic enthusiam and hard headed business realism. Susan's peice lands on the side of pratical realism and recognises that without the bucks, there are no Buck Rodgers.
Posted Fri, Aug 29, 7:26 p.m. inappropriate
paddy, a billion bucks wouldnt improve: theater in seattle. you could eliminate it altogether and it would make no
difference except to the eateries. it's not essential to the intellectual life, whet there is of it, in the city. or any other aspect of the city's being. so all this fund raising and and hand wringing is for nought.
Posted Sun, Aug 31, 5:34 a.m. inappropriate
The Missing Link: Yet--for non-profit theatre--the least understanding (and contact) these arts boards have is with the very migrant artists their audiences actually pay to see.
Laurence Ballard
Posted Sun, Sep 28, 9:46 p.m. inappropriate
Maybe not a billion, but how about $330 million?: Maybe not everyone cares for our regional theater, or find it to have direct impact on their lives, but clearly some do:
"The study, part of a national survey of the arts, is the first to single out the city of Seattle. It also compares its arts activity with that of similarly sized cities around the country.
The Seattle survey is based on data collected from 69 Seattle nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, and 415 event attendees, during 2006. About 37 percent of the audience members polled came to Seattle arts events from outside King County.
Some key findings of the survey:
• The $330 million in economic activity includes $211 million in spending by arts organizations and almost $119 million in event-related spending by arts audiences.
• Seattle's arts create 7,992 full-time equivalent jobs, with $177.8 million in resident household income.
• The arts here also generate $12.3 million in local government tax revenue and $14.4 million in state government tax revenue (including taxes paid by both arts organizations and their audiences)."
From: seattletimes.nwsource.com/
html/entertainment
/2003736418_survey06.html
And perhaps, if one believes theater and the arts have the potential of having an intellectual/cultural impact on our community, one could take constructive action, including constructive input, towards realizing this potential. You're right Mike, without interest, support, input, feedback, the arts of any community can become mediocre, off topic, because it under those circumstances artists and organizations are shooting in the dark. The mission of any non-profit, in order to qualify as a non-profit, is to serve the community. If it isn't serving you, providing you with "theater that is half way central in importance to people's lives" (your words) and you don't tell it why, you'll remain living surrounded by such mediocrity at your own doing. Go a step further than responding: communicate your interests so they can be realized.
Just my thoughts, I thank you for yours.