And This Is Why Government Affairs Committees Are Important

Adaptistration People 022

In both of my most recent strategic planning and board development projects, I spent time working with each respective group developing support for the formation of a government affairs committee. It never ceases to amaze me just how few arts organizations have a standing government affairs committee and of those that do, how peripheral they are in the overall board committee hierarchy. Unfortunately, the economic downturn is beginning to demonstrate the …

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When It Rains, It Pours

Reports of heavy rain and floods aren’t the only news coming out of Atlanta. The 9/22/2009 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an article by Pierre Ruhe that reports Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO) president and CEO, Allison Vulgamore, announced she will not renew her contract after it expires in June, 2010…

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Let The Ratings Begin!

The 2009 Orchestra Website Review reader review page is open for business. Here, you’ll be able to rate each website included in the review using a similar 5-star rating system like the one used by Amazon.com and if you wish to offer more in-depth observations, you can leave a review comment. Links to each website are provided so you don’t have to track down any sites on your own and unless you have the time to sit down and go through 82 U.S. and 14 Canadian orchestra websites in one sitting, know that there are no minimum numbers of ratings/reviews required to participate and you can submit them using your own schedule…

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The Dynamic Consequences Of Leadership Vacuum

It isn’t unusual for a music director search to last more than a year but eyebrows ascend when it takes that long to find a new CEO. No, there’s no double standard going on here and the reality is that it is much easier for a professional orchestra to appoint interim artistic leadership that can maintain or even improve an ensemble’s artistic standard (think Chicago and Haitink) as compared to installing interim executive leadership capable of the same feats for the administrative side of the coin. Recently, Peter Dobrin examined this very issue at his Arts Watch blog…

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Something Every Good Manager Knows

Earlier this week, the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM) published a copy of the comments delivered to the American Federation of Musicians’ (AFM) International Executive Board (IEB) on 7/27/2009 by its chairman, Bruce Ridge. ICSOM describes the comments as “critical of the delayed and subverted process through which the President of the AFM hired the new director of the Symphonic Services Division (SSD).”  We’ve examined this issue in two recent posts (here and here) and the publication of Ridge’s comments sheds additional light on what appears to be a growing struggle within the AFM over representation and services rendered.

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