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.

2008 Orchestra Website Review: Awards Plus The Best and Worst Of 2008

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During every orchestra website review, several orchestras deserve special recognition for how well they satisfied evaluation requirements as well as demonstrating particular originality and creativity for specific website components. As such, the Special Recognition Awards are designed to highlight individual achievements and promote them as benchmarks within the business…

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2008 Orchestra Website Review: Trends & Detailed Scores

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The 2008 reviews witnessed a number of intriguing trends, including a surge in larger budget orchestra scores which allowed them to dominate this year’s Top 10. With a few notable exceptions, this trend continued throughout the rest of the review resulting in 2008 being the first year where the overall rankings favored larger budget organizations…

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2008 Orchestra Website Review: Overall Rankings

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Between 9/25/08 and 10/8/08, 81 professional orchestra websites were examined and ranked by how well they presented their concert schedule, sold tickets, facilitated making donations, provided organizational information, utilized dynamic content, and on overall content and functionality. On a positive note, the average score was not only higher than any previous year but enjoyed the largest gain since the reviews began in 2004…

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