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…

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I’d Like To A/B That!

Philanthropy.com published an article on 12/10/2010 by Raymund Flandez that reports nonprofit orgs raise more money directly through their own websites as opposed to third party portals. At the same time, the article indicates that donation pages and shopping carts managed by a third party provider that maintain the organization’s branding and/or display the name prominently are just as effective…

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How Did We Get Here?

Guest-Author

In a recent post, Drew highlights a remark by author Joseph Horowitz suggesting that musicians should no longer expect that orchestras owe them a living wage, i.e., a full-time salary. I thought I would use my brief stint as a guest blogger to elaborate on some of the history that led us to today’s paradigm of full-time orchestral employment. Was the transformation from 1958 when a bare handful of orchestras paid a modest middle-class wage to today’s 50+ full-time orchestras an accident of history caused by the nexus of profligate national foundations and a greedy musicians’ union, or is there more to the story?

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Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste

Guest-Author

I arrived at my new job on June 1, 2008, ready to delve into the standard industry-wide issues plaguing Orchestra Iowa: plummeting ticket sales, strained relations with the musicians, immense debt, and no cash to pay bills. Although I had spent several months before my arrival creating a first year outline, that plan literally got washed down the river when two weeks into my tenure, downtown Cedar Rapids, including the Symphony’s office and performance home, was destroyed by massive floods.

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Building Concert Halls, Part 3: How to ensure success

Adaptistration People 016

In contrast to the “outside in approach” discussed in my last installment, great concert hall design starts with accommodating the essential requirements of both performers and audience, then moving outward in its architectural expression for support areas and public spaces….an “inside out approach”. There is an old expression: “form follows function” which today’s designers of concert halls and theaters would do well to return to their philosophy. And this concept can …

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