Orchestras Canada

As Orchestras Canada’s own nominating committee for the 2012-13 year swings into action, we’ve been thinking a lot about boards of directors – and we’d like both to recommend a few of our favourite resources on boards to you, and ask for your top picks, too. Here’s our list:

The resources section of Orchestras Canada’s website includes an entire page of carefully selected governance resources from around the web. And it features How To Get The Board You Need, a terrific publication – in both official languages – written for Orchestras Canada by Canadian arts consultants Margaret Genovese and Dory Vanderhoof. The first edition was a best-seller back in the days when we actually ran a publications service, and the second edition is even better. Plus, it’s available as a free download! You can discover this page for yourself, here.

Lowell Noteboom, chair of the League of American Orchestras and past chair of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, has written a comprehensive, elegant and enjoyable guide to orchestra governance entitled Good Governance for Challenging Times. Providing “a brief history of nonprofit governance models, an overview of governance responsibilities, and an introduction to the role musicians can play in collaborative governance”, Mr. Noteboom’s article can be found here.

The Harvard Business Review website is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in management and leadership issues, whether in the for-profit or not-for-profit worlds. One of our favourite HBR articles from times past – The New Work of the Non-Profit Board, by Taylor, Chait and Holland, can be read on-line free with registration or downloaded for $6.95 USD. You can find it here.

A recent communique from the League of American Orchestras reminded us of a group of resources specially developed for orchestras by BoardSource, and available to members of the League for a limited time via its website: www.americanorchestras.org.

One such resource is entitled Getting on Board with Effective Orientation – and it (and its companion volumes) are available free of charge to League member orchestras until September 30, 2011 only. To register for Getting on Board with Effective Orientation, please click here.

Fundraising special events are a boon; fundraising special events are a nightmare! Whatever your perspective, fundraising special events appear to be with us for the duration – and this week’s reading recommendations serve as wonderful guides to getting them right: introducing easy to use and commonsense approaches to evaluation, providing a comprehensive guide to their management, and providing inspiring examples of volunteer led projects that have won accolades from peers. We have recommended some of these resources before, but they’re so good, we’re not apologizing!

Here we go:

• From Charity Village’s Cynthia Armour CFRE, a short guide to special event evaluation;
• Courtesy of the Department of Canadian Heritage, Ken Wyman’s comprehensive yet highly entertaining guide to special event management;
• From the League of American Orchestras’ Volunteer Council, the ever-popular Gold Book On-Line, a comprehensive databank of award-winning volunteer-led projects.

The program for the League of American Orchestras’ annual conference has been announced – and it looks great! The conference runs from June 6-9, 2011 in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, and you can find out more about it, here.

Meanwhile, we’re hard at work confirming details for Orchestras Canada’s national orchestras meetings, taking place at the new Vancouver Symphony School of Music from June 13-15. A full update will be sent out next week, but in the meantime we’re delighted to confirm that one of our favourite presenters, Douglas Kinzey of Audience Strategies for the Arts, will kick-off Revenue Development Day on June 14 with a session entitled Successful Strategies for Building a Subscription Audience.

Perhaps you’ll have some time over the holidays to catch up on your reading – think long and complex thoughts – consider some ideas you’d like to implement in 2011. If so – we’ve got a suggestion for you! Polyphonic.org, the Eastman School of Music-based website for orchestral musicians, has launched a new page on their website called Foundation Reports. On it, you will find reports from foundations, thinktanks and the League of American Orchestras on the state of, and options for, symphony orchestras. The reports span a timeframe from the early 1990s to today – and they’re both provocative and thoughtful. You can find the webpage here.

Ketchum Canada has released the latest in its quarterly Philanthropic Trends e-newsletter, with the most recent issue dedicated to new technology use by
Canadian charities. You can find it here.

Charitable organizations in BC and Ontario wrestling with the implications of the new Harmonized Sales Tax now have access to new resources developed by the Canada Revenue Agency. They include:
A webinar on the application of the GST/HST to charities
A GST/HST checklist for charities

Finally, an absolutely vital (and provocative!) speech from the opening session of the League of American Orchestras‘ 2010 conference, by Russell Willis Taylor. Here’s how National Arts Strategies describes the speech: “There are no crises in the arts – there are crises in arts organizations as they are currently constructed. Audiences are not shrinking, they are growing, but they are not necessarily interested in consuming all the art our member organizations produce. Between 1970 and 2010, the number of arts organizations grew from 2,700 to 27,000 but the number of people funding them, and attending their events, did not grow at all. In this keynote address delivered at the joint annual conferences of  Chorus America and The League of American Orchestras, Russell Willis Taylor, President and CEO of National Arts Strategies, explores the extraordinary opportunities that arts organizations have today.” You can find it here.

It’s the season for annual convenings of arts service organizations – and, earlier this month, the League of American Orchestras hosted its annual conference in Atlanta, GA. To prepare constituents for the conference, to engage a broad audience of non-attenders, and to document the discussions at the conference, the League is hosting a highly interactive website here, where you can read blog postings, check out a lively twitter feed, and post your own comments as well.

Hats off the the Association of British Orchestras ,which has just posted a new briefing document that “highlights the extensive range of education work our orchestras deliver in schools and in the community”. “Unlocking Potential: Education and the Orchestra” is “the latest in a series of briefings being produced by the ABO to raise the profile of British orchestras” – and it tells an inspiring story. You can download the document here.

Next Wednesday, June 16 at 3:45 p.m. Eastern, the League of American Orchestras will be live streaming the Opening Session of its national conference – and the topics being discussed will have relevance to orchestras all over North America.

From what we’ve been seeing on the League’s pre-conference weblog, the discussion is likely to be both provocative and inspirational – and we strongly encourage you to take part! Just go to the conference blogsite and click on the video player at the appointed hour.

Last fall, Orchestras Canada member orchestras were offered a 3 month free trial membership in the League of American Orchestras – and many of you signed up!  The League has now upped the ante, offering Canadian orchestras 18 months’ membership in the League for the price of 12 months.  A further incentive:  orchestras who take up the offer will be able to register people for the League’s national conference in Atlanta in June for only $100.

We’ve got a number of recommendations this week:
The March/April issue of the League of American Orchestras’ Symphony Magazine is now available on-line, and you can find it here.

Community engagement is increasingly important to orchestras of all sizes and kinds, yet it can be challenging to measure its impact and effectiveness.  Two years ago, the League of American Orchestras tested and released a “civic engagement” tool, designed to help orchestras self-evaluate their work in this area.  It’s now available free of charge – and it comes complete with videos, a podcasts and even the opportunity for free consulting.  You can find it here.