Orchestra 990 Project Update: Kickstarter Launches Next Week

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More good news everybody! The remaining work for the Orchestra 990 Database Project is complete which means all we need to do is get the Kickstarter campaign material finished up, hook it into the required Amazon Payment system, and the fundraising can begin. In fact, the Adobe After Effects project for the promo video is rendering as I type.

ADAPTISTRATION-GUY-081Thanks to everyone for the reward suggestions vis-a-vis our last project update, we’ve managed to incorporate just about all of them in one form or another.

Just in case you’re coming into this without knowing about the project history, you can catch up with these brief articles:

One item we have yet to finalize is a project name, mostly because one of the donor rewards will be naming rights and that might influence the final decision. Granted, the Orchestra 990 Database Project is perfectly serviceable but not very sexy. And even though naming rights are on the donor reward table, that doesn’t mean we can’t brainstorm something between now and when we launch the Kickstarter next week, so let me encourage you to send in any ideas or suggestions via comment or email.

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.

View all posts by Drew McManus | Website

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2 thoughts on “Orchestra 990 Project Update: Kickstarter Launches Next Week”

  1. Interesting that our industry “trade group” hasn’t thought to do this: although they do make much data available, I’m not aware of 990s being pulled together. The real issue I think with the tax forms is the huge lag time in their posting, at least on GuideStar, so that the data available is a couple years old. Which you already know.

    • that thought crossed my mind too but in the end, none of the service organizations or usual suspects among major philanthropic foundations have shown much interest in accessibility as it pertains to transparency. This is one of the fundamental reasons behind why I think it is important to launch the initiative as a L3C.

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