And I need you to be better than me
And you need me to do better than you.
—Know Better, Learn Faster by Thao With The Get Down Stay Down

Over a week has passed since the 50^th Anniversary Summit of Americans for the Arts, and what a whirlwind week it was. Back at SOMArts Cultural Center we closed out an amazing turnaround year. We more than doubled our gallery attendance, revived our intern and volunteer programming, launched a website, renovated our lobby and office spaces, invested in long-overdue equipment upgrades, fought to protect our city funding, and lived to tell about it.  And yet, in many ways we are just catching up. There’s so much to do and it feels like the more we succeed, the more people we connect to who have urgent needs and high expectations.  Such is the life of a thriving nonprofit.

At the AftA convention, I connected with peers who had similar stories. We’re all exhausted. So we sat in the audience and listened to panels talk about new models, veering between skepticism and hope.

I came to convention still stubbornly hanging on to the idea that a “new model” was a structure I could study and apply to my organization—that magical combination of for-profit innovation, technology application and nonprofit altruism.

I left convention having reached the conclusion that we need to stop treating “new model” like a noun, in panels or anywhere else, when what we’re talking about is changing the system. We’re asking how we can achieve dramatic organizational change necessitated by the factors mentioned above, but succeeding via thoughtful communication and a process of enrolling (vs. influencing) stakeholders in one’s vision.

What feels new to me is the transparency. For the first time, we can look around us and see extremely detailed examples of where and how for-profit companies are recruiting and enrolling. There’s an online component for almost everything. And for the most part, small and midsize nonprofits are still hesitating to invest as much in the process as they invest in the product because, as one panelist put it, the means for enrolling (aka outreach, aka new audience development, aka getting feedback) “doesn’t feel like an internal organ of the organization.”

The most resonant statement at the convention came from Keri Putnam, executive director of the Sundance Institute, who said, “Nonprofits are too focused on product. If you are not constantly considering how to reach out and engage with the public …”. That was it. No answer, no question. A jumping-off point.

Her point was echoed in the panel “Technology’s Impact On the Future of Traditional Arts Delivery Systems,” where Tim Svenonius producer of Interactive Educational Technologies at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, warned us to “stay away from the edge” and figure out how the masses decide to utilize cutting-edge technology before investing scarce resources in that fancy new app. We talked about the importance of transitioning from monolithic undertakings (cd-rom, anyone?) to bite-sized and consistent streams of content.

At “Testing New Nonprofit Business Models,” the idea of investing in the process was again echoed when Cheryl Ikemiya of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation talked about the Innovation Lab, a program that provides facilitation and funding to help organizations design and prototype innovative strategies.

One of my favorite “ah-ha!” moments was when Dewey Schott, senior manager of leadership services for the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture, espoused the significance of enrolling versus influencing at the “Leadership and Influence” panel. It takes a special type of courage to put excitement about one’s own ideas and work front and center, a quality more often found in artists than administrators. Some of the most influential organizations I’ve worked with are still resorting to fear and force tactics, aka “if you don’t do x for us then we will do y, the economy will collapse even further, arts workers will lose their jobs, doors will close.” I’m not saying that doesn’t work, but this is an area that could use some new thinking.

Enrolling is more about excitement than power. It’s about joining a group that could be as small as a classroom or as big as an army, but it stands for something. Which is good, because as a strategy, leveraging communities and passionate perspectives plays to the strengths of the arts sector.

So I’m back home in San Francisco, and when I look around at what for-profit organizations are doing to enroll people there are some interesting case studies. This week, my inspiration is Coffee With Square, and ForageSF: Should the Market Get Bigger. I wrote a little about them both below in the hope that others would share their own enrollment case studies in the comments section.

Case study #1: Enrolling Amidst Adversity

Coffee With Square

A square is a credit-card processing device that allows one’s smartphone to collect payments. It was created when a glass artist Jim McKelvey couldn’t accept payment for his goods and proposed a solution to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The idea caught on fast, so fast that the company quickly ran into legal and production issues.

Inspiration: to update people about the company’s progress, Square launched “Coffee With Square,” a low-key Friday webcast with employees.  The first one featured Dorsey and had 1300 views. The Square homepage is also all about enrollment—there’s very little info and the most dominant element on the homepage is a big blue button that says “Get Started!”.

Case study #2: Meaningful Membership.

ForageSF: Should the Market Be Bigger?

Iso Rabins was having a hard time getting his foraged food into Bay Area farmers markets, so he started the Underground Farmers Market at a friend’s house in the Mission District. The Health Department came calling, and Rabins found a loophole: membership. People who want to attend the market are all members, the only requirement of membership is that you sign up for the email list.

Inspiration:  Rabins could have treated membership as a red-tape necessity, but instead he uses the large membership to his advantage, explaining decisions such as whether or not to move to a larger venue and asking for meaningful feedback. As a result, ForageSF’s popularity has exploded, including an upcoming feature in the New York Times Magazine.

Note: this post was originally created for and published on the blog of Americans for the Arts.

I think I broke one of the cardinal rules of blogging by skipping town and blogging on another site without warning. And now, I have just returned from four days in Philadelphia, where I attended the 2008 Annual Convention of Americans for the Arts.

What did I learn? First and foremost, to REGISTER EARLY. Staying at an overflow hotel makes it hard to blog, power-nap, or pace ones’ self throughout the days.

What can I use? Within hours of my Career 360 session with Dewey Schott of Next-Step Consulting, he forwarded me an article about high-functioning teams that I hope to utilize at our next staff retreat. The advance workshop on Better Program Evaluation will be useful in consensus-building with board members and teaching artists about how (enrollment numbers? student testimonials? mission relevance?) to define programming success.

Who did I meet? As Ruby Classen noted on her earlier blog, I traveled far from home to meet some people in my own backyard: Maren Brown of the UMass Arts Extension Service, Brian Hornby from New Haven’s Office of Cultural Affairs. A slightly awkward and rushed meeting between the Emerging Leaders Council and the State Arts Action Network resulted in one of my most enjoyable conversations of the Convention, when Anne Katz and I discovered that we both got early career breaks at the O’Neill Theater Center (many years apart, and many shared memories nonetheless). And, near the end of my stay, a chance meeting with Susan Pontious of the San Francisco Arts Commission revealed that the Hestia Mural, which I enjoy daily in my hometown of Northampton, was her very first public art project, in 1980.

Where will I go? Perhaps the better question is, where won’t I go? Members of the Seattle emerging leaders network were so compelling with their visions of next year’s UNconvention, I might head west in the fall for Bumbershoot or another long weekend. Tucson would be an exciting addition to my list of travels. And the Public Art Year in Review was a reminder that I should drive down to New York, see the waterfalls, and check out fellow emerging leader Marisa Catalina Casey’s new Starting Artists space in Brooklyn.

But for now, it is good to be HOME! Big thanks to everyone who made this convention inspiring, challenging, irreverent, and unforgettable.

Lex

p.s. I am also back to my “home” blog, http://www.lexleifheit.com.

As an added bonus, Rebecca is a trained life and leadership coach. This means that I also got to pester her with my friends’ (ahem) career conundrums, all in the name of journalism.

Seriously though, Rebecca gives some good advice, comments on Richard Florida, shares her must-read list, AND points out the bright lights of the leadership track at Convention.

Interview excerpted from The Art Agenda. Broadcast on 88.1fm, WESU, Middletown on June 12 2008.