Capacity Building Toolkit
Leadership and Management
Adaptive Arts Leadership During COVID-19 & Times of Crisis
In this session, we cover supporting your people, adapting your business model, making hard decisions with integrity, managing expectations, and re-framing your approach to programming, adaptive leadership, and creative opportunities.
At the end of this session, participants will be able to understand and be able to implement concrete strategies and tactics to build staff culture and teams remotely, be able to bring a new approach and new language to financial and business planning with their organization and board during this time of crisis, approach hard decisions with clarity and confidence, apply adaptive leadership concepts to engage their full organization (board, staff, artists, teaching artists, youth, parents) in mission-driven programming innovation, and emerge with a new network of colleagues with whom to continue this conversation, learn from, and support, strengthening the sector.
Consulting Firm: BroadBand Collaborative, Arlington, MA
Content Experts: Sara Stackhouse and Heather Fields Stern
Session Resources:
- Slide Deck (PDF)
Innovations in Audience Engagement in Virtual Performance
In this session, we cover creating & marketing programming that rises above the fray. learning, testing and understanding audience behavior in the Cloud, the artist’s perspective, and innovations & approaches to building, engaging, and retaining audiences in the virtual space.
At the end of this session, participants will be able to shape and implement new strategies for building and maintaining an audience virtually, be able to identify key questions and approaches to help shape audience engagement and audience experience experiments for virtual performance, understand and be able to test new audience engagement tools and platforms for virtual performance, have new frameworks for engaging artists in adaptive and innovative audience engagement activities, be able to articulate and distinguish between programming using virtual platforms for dissemination, and programming and audience experiences created specifically for the virtual space, and emerge with a new network of colleagues with whom to continue this conversation, learn from, and support, strengthening the sector.
Consulting Firm: BroadBand Collaborative, Arlington, MA
Content Experts: Cristin Canterbury Bagnall, Sara Stackhouse, and Bobbie Steinbach
How to Conduct Strategic Planning During COVID-19
While many organizations are having an instinct to abandon planning since their last plans felt irrelevant, this is the worst time to abandon planning. How can you help your board and leadership team take stock of the lessons learned from 2020 and prepare for your next year, even with what feel like so many unknowns? What conversations will be helpful to have now, and which will only add to the feelings of stress? How can we use planning to guide our decision-making in times of change and uncertainty?
At the end of this session, participants will be able to understand the goals of strategic planning and the strategic planning process, explore why abandoning strategic planning is the wrong response to 2021, understand how scenario planning can help with addressing open questions, understand how planning can guide decision-making in times of change and uncertainty, understand why success and failure of a strategic plan is based, not on what is decided in the strategic planning process, but on how the process is set up., learn the four critical questions to answer before you start, and explore how strategic planning during the covid pandemic and the economic recession is both different and better than what we did prior to these dual crises.
Firm: Paper Crane Associates, Westford, MA
Content Expert: Sarah Glatt
Session Resources:
- Slide Deck (PDF)
- 2020 Reflection (Word)
- Planning in Times of Change (Word)
- Using Your Priorities to Guide Decisions (Word)
Effectively Motivating Remote Teams
In this session, we cover a method commonly used by major tech corporations such as Google as well as national nonprofit organizations: Objectives and Key Results. We will also cover how to shift performance management systems to complement the OKR approach to supervision and how to engage and build strong teams in a remote environment.
At the end of this session, participants will be able to have tools and techniques for managing remote teams, understand the philosophical differences between remote management and in-person management, have ideas for building connective tissue within their team, be able to assess the current culture and build a plan to move to an improved culture, and have a list of further reading and resources for reference.
Consulting Firm: Penn Creative Strategy, New York, NY
Content Experts: Molly Penn and Marita Phelps
Session Resources:
- Asset Mapping Template (PDF)
Best Practices of Leadership Transition During COVID-19
In this session, we will cover the best ways to handle leadership transitions and position organizations for success.
At the end of this session, participants will be able to gain unique and critical information on how to conduct leadership transitions during the global COVID-19 pandemic using best practices and real-world examples.
Consulting Firm: NMBL Strategies, Saint Louis, MO
Content Experts: Eric Moraczewski and Dion Brown
Session Resources:
- Slide Deck (PDF)
- Emergency Succession Planning (from TSNE Missionworks)
Virtual Fundraising in the Time of COVID-19
In this session, we cover creating content for online fundraising, engaging and energizing your donors and sponsors in digital fundraising, streaming events, interacting via Zoom, event platforms & online fundraising tools, adapting and innovating messaging, auctions, program books and advertising.
At the end of this session, participants will be able to understand key questions and considerations for content creation for virtual fundraising, be able to develop a strategy and approach for board and sponsor engagement in digital fundraising, be able to access and make use of a set of platforms and tools for virtual fundraising, develop thoughtful strategies for maintaining a sense of occasion and audience engagement, create alternatives to traditional messages, silent and live auctions, printed materials, and sponsorship recognition, develop a point of view on collaborations with artists and teaching artists for fundraising, and merge with a new network of colleagues with whom to continue this conversation, learn from, and support, strengthening the sector.
Consulting Firm: BroadBand Collaborative, Arlington, MA
Content Expert: Sara Stackhouse
Session Resources:
- Slide Deck (Google doc)
Conducting a Successful Capital Campaign During Times of Stress
In this session, we cover unique capital campaign opportunities being presented by COVID, as well as taking a deep dive into changes due to COVID and the decisions that need to be made relating to feasibility studies, major donor relationships, community engagement and post-campaign opportunities
At the end of this session, participants will be able to discover the different types of campaigns people are running today, Identify the needs during the capital campaign, hear from experts across the country on how to apply their experiences
Consulting Firm: NMBL Strategies, Saint Louis, MO
Content Experts: Eric Moraczewski, and Dion Brown
Session Resources:
- Slide Deck (PDF)
Revisiting your Organization’s Lifecycle to Inform Planning
This session encourages regeneration by using lifecycles as a diagnostic frame to begin a strategic financial planning progress. By viewing the performance, strengths and characteristics of organizations though a lens of lifecycle characteristics, leaders and board can quickly assess their own programmatic, staffing, governance, social capital, and financial profile to see if they are aligned with its current operating model and, if not, begin to plan for realignment to meet the needs of the community moving forward. Case studies will be used to provide real-life examples of organizations that adapted their operating model pivot both their programs and business model, and finally, participants will be shown how to use a diagnostic tool to assess where their own organization.
At the end of this session, participants will be able to identify which areas/capacities/needs have changed and implications on Programs, People, Social/Network/Operations and Finance, identify where their organization is in the post-COVID ‘life-stage’, and prioritize and focus on areas that will build financial health and strategic resilience.
Consulting Firm: SectorWind, Belmont, MA
Content Expert: Sandi McKinley
Session Resources:
- Slide Deck (PDF)
Essential Ingredients and Process of Effective Collaborations and Partnerships
In this session, we cover various types of collaborations and partnerships, drawing on real world examples, and the considerations associated with each. We also cover the delicate process around vetting, building trust and conducting negotiations with potential partners.
At the end of this session, participants will be able to understand the spectrum of collaborations and partnerships with one or more organizations, have tools to support partnership vetting, landscape positioning, asset inventory, desired outcomes, understand the process of building trust, negotiating terms, and achieving commitment, and have a list of further reading and resources for reference.
Consulting Firm: Penn Creative Strategy, New York, NY
Content Experts: Molly Penn and Marita Phelps
Session Resources:
- Slide Deck (PDF)
- Boston Arts Organization Partnership Case Study (PDF)
- Arts and Non-Arts Partnerships (PDF)
- Building Partnerships for Arts Participation (PDF)
- Merger Toolkit Path (PDF)
