Home For The Holidays

I’m heading home today from Nepal and although I’m looking forward to getting back to Chicago, there’s no way to deny that working with the Unatti House and surrounding Bhaktapur children was an emotionally fulfilling experience. Clearly, there is ample need and opportunity for the HEARTbeats Foundation to implement an ongoing and sustainable program to continue working with these children…

Learn about what we did at the foundation's blog as well as my Facebook page.
You can read about our experiences at the foundation’s Nepal trip blog and if you’re a Facebook friend of mine, you can tap into dozens of captioned photos. And when you stop by the blog site, don’t forget to leave a donation via the PayPal donate button in the right sidebar. I can certify that your donation will go to a good cause and since the foundation is a 501(c)3, it is deductible.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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