CultureQ is a professional dialogue about front-burner audience issues in the arts and education.
“Which did the recession hit harder in your organization or sector in '09 — earned revenue or contributed revenue? And what will you be doing differently in 2010?”
Responses
Your voices were unanimous: declines in contributed revenue were by far the bigger challenge last year, and you predict that the worrisome trend will continue well into 2010.
On the earned revenue side, the museum people among you reported mostly higher attendance, confirming a happy trend that has been reported nationally as well as here in Chicago. Ditto for the performing arts, where, as filmmaker Scott Silberstein noted here, Broadway raked in record ticket sales and many nonprofit dance and theatre companies saw both subscriptions and single ticket sales go up.
“None of this should be wildly surprising,” Scott writes. “Ticket sales often go up during recessions, when people need an escape and feel they can’t afford more extravagant ones like vacations.”
Those of you in higher ed pointed out that applications to both undergraduate and most graduate programs have been rising sharply, and not just to business schools, which traditionally see a spike in interest when layoffs send some managers onto new job tracks. (At our longtime client the University of Chicago, for example, applications to the college were up a staggering 42% this year.)
But contributed revenues in all these fields “took a big hit,” especially in terms of foundation support. Pamela Ambrose, who directs the Loyola University Museum of Art Museum in Chicago, reports that “foundation support was diminished considerably...especially for general operating support. Our museum is now concentrating on smaller family foundations with targeted interests.”
Others focused on individual giving, where the figures were equally grim – though with a few bright spots. Collectively, you seem to be unsure how to respond to this. “We can control making our offerings more attractive to visitors,” one museum consultant observes, but “how donors feel about their personal financial situation is beyond our control.”
For orchestra trustee Penelope Sachs, the solution is more active, personalized management of donor relationships: “We will be working to try to ensure that we connect with all our donors to keep them giving at some level.”
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