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.

Sometimes The Best Message On Why The Arts Are Important Doesn’t Need Quantification

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Even before the pandemic, the orchestra field had its hands full addressing its relevance in contemporary culture. Unfortunately, financial pressures of the pandemic have started to reignite counterproductive guns or butter debates. While that’s nothing more than a logical fallacy trap, we don’t have the luxury of ignoring it. But instead of getting sucked into the conversation, change the topic. A good source of inspiration is and article by Arthur C. …

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The First Step In NOT Reinventing The Wheel

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I completed the first in a series of articles I’m writing about how arts administrators can use the Laws of User Experience to be better at just about everything they do. The articles show you how each of the 21 practices can be applied to far more than just user experience tasks. The inaugural post focuses on using the Serial Position Effect across the following four tasks: Determining the order of …

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Friday Client Sugar

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It’s always invigorating when working with great clients and a few weeks back, I had the pleasure of launching the redesigned Kansas City Repertory Theatre website: kcrep.org. Everyone inside the organization was just wonderful to work with from the initial inquiry call to checking off the final punch list item. And because we operate on an annual license fee-based system that includes unlimited training and support, I get to interact with …

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Turn Of The Screw, Politics And Fundraising Edition

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While balancing political ideology across stakeholders has always been a core task for executives and fundraisers, that world has fundamentally changed over the past several years. It’s a topic we’ve examined across several articles. And the orchestra field certainly isn’t alone. To that end, Drew Lindsay published a pair of articles at The Chronicle of Philanthropy examining this issue from the broader perspective of the larger nonprofit sector. It’s worth pointing …

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Because You Know I’m All About That Board

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Washington Chorus Executive Director, Stephen Beaudoin, published an engaging post at his LinkedIn feed yesterday with five steps aspiring board members should consider that generated quite the conversation. Here’s the original post, with his permission: To all my friends and colleagues considering the service opportunity of joining a nonprofit board – Here are five steps you might want to consider before approaching a nonprofit organization to express interest in exploring potential …

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