Back in July she had a great post on the various mistakes charities make in running their charity drawings. Most charities will avoid the prohibition on lotteries by providing a method to enter without purchase.

However, in order to avoid running afoul of regulators, everyone has to have an equal chance at winning. If someone gets more entries by donating more money, a regulator view that as a consideration required to win and the sweepstakes becomes reclassified as a unlicensed lottery according to Carter.

Another thing she points out is that donations which gain someone a chance to win are not tax-deductible. Unlike with tickets to a gala or fundraising event where the amount over the cost of the meal can be deducted, in most cases if the donation is tied to a chance to win then none of it is tax-deductible.

The post covers some other issues organizations running charity raffles may face. For example, in California, it is only a raffle if the ticket is paper with a detachable stub. You can’t have digital entries.

In some states, you have to register and file a bond once the prize reaches a certain dollar value threshold. This can vary by state. In Florida it has to be done in 7 days from. In New York, it is 30 days.

Reporting winnings over $600 has to be on a form W2-G, not a 1099. At a certain threshold, the charity is responsible for handling the withholding of federal taxes.

There are likely a lot of other nuances specific to states and municipalities. These are just some of the things Carter advises people to pay attention to. I’m not a lawyer like she is and I am sure she would tell you to consult a source other than a blog for real advice.

I was surprised she caught their eye amid all the other traffic on the site. From her post about the honor, I think she was as well.

They called out one of her recent posts about New Bedford Symphony’s redesign of their website to be more customer centered rather than organization centered as one of their favorites.

I have been following her work and writing about it for the last five years (I would have said it was three before I searched). I have definitely felt like the quality and focus of her work has been growing over that time.

While I really enjoyed the post LinkedIn called out, that was the icing on the cake of her work. The core deliciousness of said cake in my mind was her post about the data collection, surveying, and personalized customer centered messaging New Bedford Symphony used in a pilot program that resulted in three-fold increase in purchases and revenue than the year prior and nearly three times the conversion rate of the control group of their pilot.

If you haven’t been following her, take a closer look.

They examined the use of search filters on cultural organizations’ websites. Not something I really ever thought I wanted to know, but was curious to read about once I knew the data existed.

The big finding was….people aren’t using filters as much as you might think.

Another interesting insight was that when filters are hidden, people don’t use them. Yeah I know, you’re thinking “No duh!” What they found was when filters were concealed under Advanced Options, they didn’t get used. When filters are revealed, people use them a lot more. In the case of the British Museum, the use of filters “jumped massively.”

Though they also revealed that for many websites, the three filters appearing on the top of the list got used the most.

They suggest making all the filters visible and if you are concerned about the clutter that results, consider whether you really need the terms you would relegate to Advanced Options.

The final insight that provided was a little counter-intuitive. People use search bars less than they use filters. They observe it seems strange that people would rather hunt through filter terms than type a few terms in a search bar, but that is what happens.

He says you don’t get these results from just booking shows. The disjointed efforts of individual entities is often inefficient and results in duplicated efforts. Music offices can streamline and coordinate efforts and perhaps most importantly, can work to develop the infrastructure, policy, and support networks for venues, artists, schools, restaurants, and allied businesses.

A good illustration of this is found in a blog post I wrote last November on another Fast Company article Mandrella authored on Huntsville’s efforts to support house concerts. The city was providing support in everything from noise ordinance training, advice on forming LLCs, and pointing would be venues to ticketing services.

Arts Midwest published some related research this past summer.

He offers advice for forming music offices, advocating for the solicitation of feedback and input all the entities in the municipality from the largest to the smallest, most commercial to most niche. It shouldn’t just be the venues, musicians, equipment and labor providers and businesses directly associated with performances, but also schools and other entities contributing to the development of the local talent pipeline.

Essentially, while arts professionals cite well-being, community building, and placemaking as benefits, the general public feels that the arts are good for tourism, economy, and heritage.

It may just be that arts professionals have only been talking about well-being, community, placemaking as benefits relatively recently and that messaging hasn’t permeated the general public conversations yet.

There was also a feeling among Britons participating in the survey that the arts were for upper class people and urban dwellers.

While the percentages and perceptions in Britain may be different than in the US or Canada, the general perception is likely the same in both countries.

If the arts and culture community is going to talk about arts and culture improving well-being and communities, there needs to be better communication drawing a line between the work being done and better quality of life that has resulted.

A fair bit of the way down, I perked up at a statement he makes that aligns with my opposition to the prescriptive use of doses of art and culture to solve problems.

Neuman writes (my emphasis)

I think there is a connection between this sentiment and the idea that arts and culture are something that are nice to have, but not necessary. The idea that play is the reward for working and what you do to recharge so you have the energy to work again turns play into a utilitarian companion for labor.

Neuman cites examples of the value he and others like Nietzsche, Rousseau, and Einstein, and a Stanford University study have found walking distances have had for creative thinking and problem solving.

I vacillated between thinking these examples could be viewed as a prescriptive use of walking for problem solving or as examples of people who integrated a balance of work and play into their process. Just as with the arts, I think it is too easy to interpret these examples as “just add walking to help you solve problems.”

Especially since the Stanford research found that treadmills were just as effective at inspiring divergent thinking and generating multiple solutions as walking about in nature.

Neuman ends the piece essentially noting that play is truly valuable to humans when they aren’t focused on keeping score about how many good ideas they can squeeze from X amount of intentional play.

I have shared this before in previous posts, but it bears a repeat. One of the things they found when they dug down into responses indicating cost was a barrier to attendance was that admission price was way down the list of cost related concerns.

It is ninth behind general concerns about the economy, travel costs, inflation, lodging, financial markets, personal finances, child/senior care, and parking. In terms of weighted values, admission was about 25% of general economy for exhibit based organizations and 40% for performing arts organizations.

This is based on responses collected in Q2 2024.

While these factors still influence whether people decide to participate in an arts and culture experience, the presenters’ advice is:

Another valuable bit of data they shared was the general audience acquisition cost equation they first developed in 2015 and revised in 2024.

In this equation, A is Audience Acquisition cost and R is applicable revenues.

For exhibit based entities, the equation is A=R(16.3%). For performance based entities it is A=R(17.2%).

The explained that performance percentage is higher because every event varies from prior ones and there is new information to impart vs. exhibit based entities which have a baseline collection of art, animals, plants, displays etc., with which people are generally familiar.

As you might expect, the acquisition costs are also generally higher for newer organizations who have yet to establish awareness of themselves among the general population.

The final bit I wanted to share is their comments about fundraising appeals to foundations in an environment where there is pressure for them to fill the gap left by the drop in federal funding.

In the recap post and video (subscription required) they reviewed their environmental scan of which segments are trending as well or better than they were pre-pandemic (zoos, aquariums, live theater, history museums/sites, art museums) and which are facing headwinds (science centers, children’s museums, orchestras, other performing arts.)

Dilenschneider addressed this data in the context of the expectations many non-profit boards of directors who feel that that attendance should be increasing 25% every year since the pandemic. Whereas the data shows that if you are an art museum for example, and are hitting or exceeding the 2.7% average increase in attendance you are doing pretty well.

Her colleague, Scott Corwon noted that the NFL and college football each has seen around a 19% decrease in on-site attendance over the last decade. He suggested that if organizations as well-resourced as they are seeing a decrease it isn’t because they aren’t smart about marketing or that people don’t like football, it is increasingly difficult to get people to leave their homes.

One trend they identified that is something of a double-edge sword is that people are focusing more on engaging in local activities. They are looking for places that are easy to reach and don’t require a lot of advance planning and arrangements. So there is a lot of opportunity for arts organizations to connect and serve their local community.

The reason for this local engagement is the somewhat negative side of the aforementioned sword – time crunch. When people are leaving their homes to do something locally, they have a specific amount of time they intend to spend.

For entities like museums, that means they may not engage with all aspects of the collection if they only plan to spend 90-120 minutes. Visitors are seeking meaningful experiences in a shorter time frame so the IMPACTs presenters making that experience available sooner than later. Don’t make people have to work for the payoff. They suggest the first 15 minutes should be superlative.

The IMPACTs also staff caution that what visitors think is important and most interesting may not align with what professional insiders think is most interesting so it is worth making sure you understand what your visitors seek from the experience.

On the positive side, based on data collected in 2025 it doesn’t take very long for visitors to feel they have had a meaningful experience and gotten value from their visit. The sweet spot is about 60-90 minutes with a slight uptick from 91-150 minutes from which it starts to slip downward. People may not be seeing everything you wish they would, but they are walking away satisfied with their visit.

To be clear, this is data for exhibit based experiences. Performing arts experiences are different and more difficult to measure as clearly since: 1 – people understand there is a specific time they need to spend to get the whole experience. It isn’t as self-directed as a visit to a zoo or garden. 2 – performance experiences vary between short festival performances and three hour long operas.

The presenters say that suggestions for 60, 90, 120 minute experiences tend to be well-received by visitors of exhibit based organizations. Positioning the remainder of the collection as something people can look forward to on their next visit, perhaps in a manner akin to “staff picks” cards found in book stores can inspire a return visit sooner than the 24.6 month cycle most exhibit based visitors average.

Along these same lines, they also mentioned having suggestions of other things to do in the area to offer visitors as well. This can provide a sense of “critical mass and density of experience” that enhances the perceived value of the visit and make people feel more inclined to return. For example, in addition to visiting the museum, there is a nice Riverwalk, restaurants, and shops within an easy walk.

Organizations in some of those states have already been provided preliminary notice that a portion of the state’s share of those funds will be made available to organizations within the state to provide different type of programming. The assumption is these funds will likely to distributed in forms of grants.

Here is the language from the settlement (Section G, Payment Purposes end of page 38)

There was a post I made in August where I wrote about Angela Meleca’s observation that an unrealized outcome of an arts organization’s programming was workforce development despite the organization’s development director’s insistence that wasn’t part of their mission.

I encourage anyone looking to apply for a grant program related to these settlement monies to evaluate the outcomes of their existing programs and identify any that achieve results that may not fall within the traditional definition of arts and cultural programs.

As I had mentioned in that post, non-profit arts and cultural entities have frequently added programs in order to meet the requirements of grants. And this has placed additional burdens on staff and resources. This is not what I am advocating for.

If you have a program that has resulted in a reduction of body dysmorphia, increased mental health, seen youth so engaged they put aside their phones –even if that wasn’t the specific intent of the program. Think about how grant funding can expand your capacity in that area or provide some sort of adjacent programming. (i.e. Can lessons learned be of value to medical and mental health professionals.)

Success in getting a grant aligned with outcomes not traditionally associated with the arts may serve as a way to change the narrative with funders about the categories of support for which your work is eligible.

Gladwell had based his claim on a 1993 study of violinists. In 2019 another group tried to replicate the study but didn’t achieve the same results. One of the differences in the 2019 study was that the designers didn’t tell those evaluating the violin performances how many hours the violinists had engaged in deliberate practice. They didn’t want to even unconsciously influence the perceptions of the evaluators.

What the 2019 study found was that those rated as providing the best performance quality had practiced fewer hours than those rated as providing a good performance. Those rated as least accomplished practiced least.

They make the caveat that these results were achieved using a relatively small sample size with one musical instrument and may not reflect how skills develop in other fields of endeavor.

The point that make is that it is difficult to identify a specific set of factors which delineates the difference between best and good. The 10,000 hours provided a facile explanation to complex circumstances.

For years now I have been a proponent of helping people realize they have the capacity for creativity. The insight I had is that people may not recognize or value when their unconscious has come up with a solution. If you think creativity and talent is something other special people have, you may not put a lot of stock in those momentary bursts of inspiration you have and work on developing or applying the thoughts you have.

Essentially, it may not be enough to tell people they have the capacity to be creative and teach them different exercises to stimulate creative thinking (i.e. improv, sketching exercises, etc.), it may be necessary to help people recognize the potential value of the ideas that occur to them and grasp on to them.

The main thrust of the podcast was how solutions often come to people when they aren’t thinking directly about them. I have had this experience often where I will think of a good marketing hook or solution to a scheduling issue while hiking, taking a shower, mowing the lawn, etc.

One of the many things I learned from the podcast though is that there is a particular set of circumstances where not thinking about the problem is actually effective. In one experiment in the Netherlands that podcast guest Ap Dijksterhuis conducted, they had one group focus on solving a problem and nothing else. Another group they had think about the problem and then provided them with a distracting activity. A third group they had think about the problem, tell them to forget about the problem because it wouldn’t be brought up again, and then provided them with a distracting activity.

Both the second and third group were introduced to the problem again. (Third group was essentially told, ha ha, we lied about it not coming up again.) The third group which was told to stop thinking about the problem was no more successful than the first group in solving the problem.

Coming to a solution while not thinking about only occurs if the unconscious knows that the problem still matters and needs a solution. Even if you have decided to leave a problem at work and enjoy the weekend, your brain knowing it is waiting for you on Monday keeps itself working in the background on your behalf.

So if you tell people that they may be able to find a solution by not thinking about it, make it clear there are different levels of “not thinking about it.”

He says his own time serving on boards have been loads of fun due to what he got of the experience.

He lists five different Pleasures of Board Service.

First among them is being able to become a subject matter expert in the areas the non-profit operate. He notes there are not only opportunities to gain new knowledge and skills, but also sharpen and expand expertise one already possesses.

Second on his list is Servicing Is Learning:

His third and fourth points are networking opportunities and joining a group with whom you can form friendships. Basically, professional and personal relationships. For some people who find they are have a hard time meeting new groups of people forming new relationships, this benefit may be more highly valued than you anticipate.

His fifth benefit is doing meaningful work that fulfills a passion they may have. For many people their career may not feel meaningful or align with the sentiment of “doing something you love, and you will never work a day in your life.” Working with a non-profit can provide something people seek to add to their lives.

There were fights, threats made to staff and property damage before they started playing classical compositions.

But after that, things immediately took a turn for the better. All they needed to do was start playing classical music and that immediately fixed the problem.

Well, that and turning off the Wi-Fi and charge points. And shutting down parts of the restaurant. And having staff wear body cameras and and personally unlock and relock the restaurant doors for customers.

And also

But beside restricting access, extra security measures, added patrols, bans, intervention with parents, and providing additional places for young folks to hang out, the real hero here was the classical music.

That is what the headline and first sentence of the news story credits as the solution so it must be true.

Apparently the attractive murals in the area weren’t enough of an art intervention to solve the problem. (Checked Google Streetview to verify the correct McDonalds appeared in the story. Murals weren’t there in June 2024)

It totally wasn’t “….the power of a joined up, partnership approach to tackle problem behaviour,” as police Inspector Josh Carter says.

There was a period in which Edmondson thought there was a problem with her data because it was showing a strong statistical relationship between good team work and high error rates. She expected good team work to be associated with low error rates.

On a hunch she cross referenced her data with a question she asked people to rate a statement about making a mistake and how likely it would be held against you. It turned out there was a connection between fewer consequences for reporting a mistake and high error rate. In other words, people appeared to be more willing to report a mistake if there were fewer perceived consequences for doing so.

She had a research assistant go to the hospital to dig deeper into this question and the result seemed to bear out.

While we often discuss how the creative process frequently involves making mistakes and trying new approaches and how this is an practice that non-profit arts can offer the commercial sector, the truth is that arts and creative team work environments can have little tolerance for mistakes.

Outside of the official bounds of a creative environment of rehearsals and early design reviews, the expectations of executing quickly and achieving a lot in a short time at low cost can be pretty high.

I recently told some folks that I am glad there has been a general trending away from the negative aspects of the work environment of my early career. I still hear and read about some pretty unforgiving and problematic practices.

It is worth remembering what I quote Amy Edmondson saying above – demanding people eliminate errors doesn’t mean they stop happening, just that people work to make sure no one hears about them.

I sit on the safety committee for my employer. One of the near fanatical focuses they have is reporting near misses because they are leading indicators of problems. Reporting you almost got stung by a scorpion opening up a water meter box and how you and others can avoid an actual sting in the future contributes to the prevention of injury.

But that sort of honest communication only occurs if there isn’t a perception of dire consequences in admitting you should have waited for a co-worker before climbing a ladder.

He cited a study from PwC which found:

The situation seems pretty daunting for recent graduates who had previously been able to develop discernment and judgment over the course of their career and are now being expected to exhibit themwhen they walk through the door.

The source of the competitive advantage possessed by those in the creative economy isn’t a big revelation – it is the cycle of failure and iteration along with curiosity, inquiry, and experimentation that are central to all creative disciplines.

Because companies expect these skills on day way and aren’t likely to patiently wait for new employees to develop them, Schupbach says it is up to teachers, mentors, and alumni to cultivate these skillsets among younger generations.

In the newsletter Bowen cites ideas from Douglas Hubbard’s book, How to Measure Anything, indirectly echoing the lyrics of Rush’s, “Freewill”, “….if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

Though in this case it is more a matter of just because you aren’t choosing to measure it, doesn’t mean you aren’t making decisions. (my emphasis)

Bowen was posting this in preparation for a discussion group of Museum as Progress members that was held in early June. He attached a chapter from Hubbard’s book as the basis for the discussion. One section where Hubbard covers the concept of sustainability piqued my interest.

Generally when you are writing grants and the funder asks about your plans to make the funded program sustainable, they want to know how the program will support itself in a year or so when they stop providing funding.

In a section of that chapter Hubbard talks about sustainability in terms of reducing the magnitude of a harmful event, or reducing the probability of it happening. The example he gives is the collapse of agriculture resulting in famine and poverty. He says that none of the negatives outcomes can be reduced to zero, but if you are able to reduce things like the number of people impacted, the duration of the crisis or prevent it from happening at all, those outcomes indicate an increased degree of sustainability due to your efforts.

Too often the context of the sustainability term used in funding seems to expect maintaining the program at the same level as it was when grant funding was available or growing it from there.

Angela Meleca made a post today that somewhat intersects with this idea. She gives the example of a non-profit that had been informed that a funder was shifting their priorities from supporting the arts to “workforce development, economic mobility, and stronger communities.”

As she was talking about the programs the organization ran, she noted that some of them were actually aligned with some of these priorities.

The development director responded that workforce development wasn’t part of their mission. Angela says her thought was that regardless of mission, that was the outcome the program was resulting in. (I would argue it aligns with stronger communities as well.)

There has long been a conversation in non-profit arts about the problem with trying to shoe horn your programs in to matching what a grant says it will support. Often this moves an organization off mission and may even increase the burden on organizational staff as people pick up new duties to meet the promise of the grant application.

Angela’s focus in this piece and others she has written is more aligned with becoming better at looking at the outcomes your organization are achieving and making the case for the value of your programs based on that versus trying to change the organization to meet a need.

Rather than trying to convince people that arts solve specific problems, the focus is more on saying what we already do well is a solution to the problem you seek to resolve.

Getting back to the original topic of this post, just because you aren’t measuring these outcomes doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Given the way funding priorities are shifting, it may be worth paying attention and evaluating how your core strengths might already be highly valued.

Many cruise lines are upping the quality of their technical equipment and partnering with London’s West End to transfer productions to the floating stages. Additionally, some cruises are offering immersive experiences drawn from TV shows like Peaky Blinders and Dr. Who. One company is running a contest soliciting original works to be performed at sea.

Details about the challenges of mounting productions at sea are interspersed throughout the story. Even though they say feedback indicates people are booking cruises based on the performances being offered over even the destinations, the story also mentions that shows are edited to fit the space and time allotted which suggests customers aren’t getting the full experience of the original production.

Mounting some high production value original works written to meet the needs of the ship board experience may be the better option. There is a possibility we could see shows transfer from cruise ships to terrestrial based venues on the West End and Broadway.

The captive nature of the cruise environment may even help to introduce/familiarize younger demographics to performance attendance experience. According to the article in 2023 Cruise Lines International Association reported that 22% of passengers were millennials and 14% were Gen Z.

Though some performers have found that not all audiences are created the same. A comedian whose show was nominated for a comedy award at the Edinburgh Fringe was met with what he described as a “a religious silence every night” on the cruise ship.

International borders and weather also present some challenges:

According to them people have an internal meter that evaluates whether a price increase is too much to continue making a purchase. By having multiple incremental increases it forces people to continually re-evaluate whether the experience is now too expensive versus instituting one big increase and leaving the price there for the same amount of time.

The other thing they point out is that you lose revenue by gradually increasing a price versus making one big increase. They note that if you have 100,000 visitors a year and make one big $5 increase that you hold for five years, you making $1 million more than if you increased the price $1 each year for five years.

They also note holding a price for a number of years results in a perception of stability versus bumping on a yearly basis. There is a sense that you planned well and haven’t needed to make changes rather than always playing catch up with the pricing.

Now in terms of dynamic pricing, the outcomes are a little less clear:

Personally, I am left wondering about the nuances that may be present in all this. Just thinking about grocery shopping, if I see prices varying in small increments, say between .59 and .89, I mostly suck it up. However, if something is now $1 more than it was last week, I hesitate to make a purchase. I have stopped buying goods where the price has shot up $1 in one week and not dropped again.

I am pretty sure there are things I have continued to purchase whose purchases are currently more than $1 more than they were a year ago, but have been increased more incrementally and haven’t tripped my internal calculus.

So I wonder if Dilenschneider’s research is based on intermittent purchases rather than weekly purchases or purchases of experiences versus purchases of goods and materials.

It may be if you are purchasing every week, you notice the big increases but aren’t alarmed by smaller increases because it part of a blur of 20 different items you are purchasing at a time.

Then if you are purchasing a handful of tickets once a month or maybe once a quarter or more, you may be more aware of what the price was last time because you are only purchasing a few items with less frequency.

If anyone has any insight into consumer behavior in these situations, I would be interested to know more. I know I am not the only person paying attention to the price of their groceries these days.

He also noted that AI tends to validate the perspective of the person asking the question. He related the story of a client who wrote a strongly worded letter based on AI advice which created an antagonistic relationship with another party which resulted in a prolonged conflict between them.

He said the whole issue could have been solved with a minor revision in contract language and a conversation.

But even more importantly, Firemark says, when you ask AI for advice or to help you produce something, you are making assumptions about what the solution is. One example he gives is asking AI to generate an independent contractor document when the legally the relationship is employer-employee.

Likewise if you aren’t familiar with the difference between copyrights and trademarks, you may end up insufficiently protecting your corporate identity. You may incorporate your business using the wrong/disadvantageous structure.

As much as you may wish to avoid the cost of working with a lawyer, they are still able to evaluate your goals and the context of your requests better than AI. They can also help you recognize that what you think is important isn’t really relevant and that you have overlooked some crucial arrangements.

Apparently, the most your responses can align with those of others in the United States is 7%.

Godin scored 4%. My score was around 1%.

So when you believe that millions of people think like you do, you are technically correct in that at most ~24 million people out of 342.6 million in the US hold the exact same set of beliefs as you.

But also there are even more millions who don’t.

I have been writing a bit about marketing to different audiences the past few weeks. In the context of this data it makes me wonder how valid the exercise of creating hypothetical profiles of audiences actually is.

If at most 7% of the community you are trying to reach is going to perfectly share the beliefs of others in the community, you are really angling for a small segment of the community.

The percentage is guaranteed to be smaller than 7% because at least a few percent will be knocked off when people who don’t like or feel comfortable with whatever you are offering self-select out.

Obviously the remaining 2%-4% (which may still be an overestimate) don’t have to be perfectly in-synch with one another to enjoy experiences your organization offers.

Ultimately, participation in arts and culture may indeed have niche appeal because that is the best you can hope for.

Though again, 2% of the US population is about 7 million people which isn’t a small number, except in relation to the whole nation.