
Around 9 years ago I wrote about a response someone had gotten from the head of a dance program while trying to revive an annual dance festival. The head of the program said he didn’t …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:26PM[SHARE]Continuing on the theme of employee turnover that I wrote about last week, I wanted to harken back again to an early post I made about Johns Hopkins study saying that the non-profit sector w…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:10PM[SHARE]I am going to be on vacation for the next couple weeks. As is my practice, I will be featuring some of the more interesting/thought providing posts from my archives while I am away. At the r…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 06:30PM[SHARE]Creativity Post had a good piece last week about simple business rules that complements Vu Le’s recent Nonprofit With Balls post on developing organizational values. Both pieces cautio…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 06:30PM[SHARE]It recently struck me that when people encourage students to go into STEM or business as careers, they may be underestimating the importance they place on daily human interactions and are ta…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:24PM[SHARE]Always Doe Never Bucks One of the most frustrating experiences in a job search is the salary line in a job description. Or rather, lack of thereof. If you actually see a salary range rather …
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]Via Kotte.org is P.T. Barnum’s short book, Art of Money Getting. If you are like me in thinking Barnum said “there’s a sucker born every minute,” (he didn’t), y…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 03:45AM[SHARE]It is probably no surprise to learn that food brings communities together. CityLab recently had a piece about a group in Tallahassee, FL that received a grant from the Knight Foundation to s…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:54PM[SHARE]I frequently write about the need to have a donation acceptance policy. In addition to not having the resources to handle non-cash donations, some donations come with conditions that do not …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:32PM[SHARE]You have probably heard stories about how people blast classical music to scare drug dealers out of their neighborhoods, homeless out of train stations and teens away from convenience stores…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:16AM[SHARE]In addition to responding to comments he makes on the blog, I have had some email exchanges with artist Carter Gillies. Many times in the course of our correspondence, he will say “I t…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:58AM[SHARE]For over a decade now there has been a conversation about how detrimental it can be if an arts organization decides to add new programs in order to qualify for foundation grants and funding.…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:55AM[SHARE]One of the more intriguing ideas I have written about here is the Artist Pension Trust. It was started 10 years ago with the goal of providing retirement benefits to the 2000 participating a…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:14PM[SHARE]There is a really interesting piece on Slate telling an all too familiar story. Seeing that the median age of its listeners has been creeping slowly up from 45 to 54, NPR is in the throes of…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:03PM[SHARE]I frequently advocate for arts organizations to find ways to help for-profit companies instill creativity and energy in their employees. Last month, the Partnership Movement of Americans for…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 10:43PM[SHARE]I have a post about board recruitment over on ArtsHacker today where I call attention to a webinar Non-Profit Quarterly recently conducted on the subject. My focus in that article was on how…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:25PM[SHARE]Non-Profit Quarterly recently hosted a webinar to present “The Completely Revised Guide to Great Board Recruitment.” If you have been following recent conversations about the rol…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]There have been a lot of library closings in the UK over the last few years so VICE went around and asked people what libraries meant to them and how they were using them. People they spoke …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:06PM[SHARE]VolunteerMatch’s Engaging Volunteers blog recently drew attention to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report (BLS) that shows volunteer rates are continuing to drop. As the post author Tes…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 08:57PM[SHARE]I was really intrigued by the results of a recent study coming out of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs that shows “managers play down their c…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:08PM[SHARE]Seth Godin recently posted that it is good to share our “give up goals,” the things we are going to give up in order to improve ourselves. The idea is that if we backslide, our f…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:45AM[SHARE]In international trade, having a most favored nation agreement means that your country will receive trade terms on par with the most favorable terms offered to another country. When it comes…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]My interest was recently piqued when I read a piece in The Economist which reported that two opera conservatories in Sweden declined to admit male singers because they were not up to standar…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:34AM[SHARE]By and large I keep things general and relatively low on direct criticism in my blog posts. However, since the goal of this blog is to engender better practices in arts organizations, I …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 01:22AM[SHARE]When I read a post on Marginal Revolution blog about high end stores hiding cash registers in favor of roving sales associates with mobile checkout devices, I immediately wondered if there m…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:16AM[SHARE]Jason Gots, editor and creative producer over at Big Think recently wrote about “The Upside of Amateurism.” He is troubled by the perception that so much value is being placed on…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 12:10AM[SHARE]Today the Hewlett Foundation released the results of a study on a question I have regularly written about over the last 7-8 years– When will non-profit executives retire so the younger…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 11:43PM[SHARE]With all the recent emphasis about the responsibility of a non-profit board to practice good governance and oversight it may come as a surprise to learn that refraining from approving the tr…
SOURCE: artshacker.com at 03:00AM[SHARE]One of the most interesting This American Life shows that I have come across and have listened to a couple times is about an auto manufacturing plant that Toyota and GM built in partnership.…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:29PM[SHARE]In the process of trying to convince people of the value of attending a live event, performing arts people will often cite the opportunity for chaos. They will say something along the lines …
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:14PM[SHARE]I was listening to an interview with Chattanooga Symphony and Opera Concertmaster Holly Mulcahy today and there were a couple things said that jumped out at me. (Not the least of which was i…
SOURCE: Butts In The Seats at 09:00PM[SHARE]

