There is a competition going on for $7,000 in my area. Twenty-nine non-profit organizations have been chosen, and the rules are that people can vote for you once a day until November 10th. Guess who is in the lead? A community choir organization! They are leading by 700 something votes.

I have noticed over the years that community organizations can be better at audience building than a professional organization. Why do you think this is? I believe it is because more people jump on the band wagon to help spread the word. There is a better team mentality!

Another case in point, I was at an organization that at first was a community organization that turned professional. The percentages (income to expenses) in many cases showed that they were doing better than when they turned professional. This was happening until the organization started using the audience development team mentality again.

Yesterday I posted about how apathetic we have become and that it is time for a change. The philosophy that it is someone else’s job to promote and spread the word is not working any longer. Everyone that is involved must do their part these days to build audiences.

Unless you have a ton of money for marketing to keep using consistently, implementing audience development strategies is the better way to go. This includes the team mentality where you have a team to do outreach, social media, word of mouth, etc.

One of my most visited blog posts of all time was about how churches have audience development down. This is another example of how a community organization has many hands to make the workload light and right.

I will keep adding my voice for this change for our arts industry. I have seen what creates success, and what I see is that when a community gets together to work on accomplishing the goals, the arts business is more likely to succeed.

Any type of arts business, even if you are an individual artist, can make this shift to using people power for success.

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, Audience Development Specialists