This podcast is about running our business: how to grow audiences, develop high performing teams and leaders, get younger attendees in the seats and on the donor rolls, apply strategies working in other sectors, and generate more revenue, all in order to serve the mission and flourish in a changing world.

We are talking all things the business side of the arts, and it is not business as usual.

Season Six of The Offstage Mic launches April 14. Watch, listen and follow along wherever you get your podcasts.

Through honest reflection, personal experience, and practical tools, we unpack why time management in arts leadership isn’t just about productivity—it’s about reclaiming your role as a strategic visionary. You’ll learn how to identify the 20% of your work that drives real impact, why busyness can be a form of avoidance, and how to shift your focus toward building a thriving future for your organization. If you're ready to trade burnout for clarity and momentum, this episode offers both the mindset shift and tactical tools to help you get there.

The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

Learn how moving just 2% more charitable donations to monthly giving could unlock $9 billion in recurring revenue. Discover why recurring donors give 42% more per year, and how to build a donor pipeline that leads to more major gifts—not fewer. If you’re tired of chasing one-time checks and ready to grow real stability, this episode is a must-listen.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why over-relying on major donors puts your organization at risk
• The $9 billion opportunity in recurring giving
• How to launch and grow a thriving monthly giving program
• Why digital marketing skills are key to donor retention
• How to move monthly donors into major giving

The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

Guest: Chelsea Chambers, Executive Director of the Peninsula Symphony

Guest: Jo Griffin, Recruitment Specialist at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

For more on this, check out Amy Cuddy's Ted Talk: "Your body language may shape who you are."

Guest: Carlos Cordero, new choral music artist and advocate; creator of The Happy Choir

Guest: Paula Wilson, Member Services and Communications Manager at Equity Arc

Guest: Allison Lambacher, Associate Director of Digital Engagement at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

For more insights on this, check out this past episode with Kevin Oakes himself.

For more insights on this, check out this past episode with Kevin Oakes himself.

Over several years of experience, from my first job at the Seattle Symphony to becoming an executive director and developing the 'Long Haul Model', I can now identify the main, underlying problem most arts organizations run into when thinking about their data. And I brought in some folks to help me talk about it. 

In this bonus episode, I interview special guests Sune Hjerrild and Jan Pilgaard Carlsen, co-founders of Artelize, a company that eats, sleeps, and breathes using data in the arts. We talk about how to harness your data to retain more patrons, what key metrics are important to monitor to know if your retention efforts are working, and why most CRMs make patron retention challenging, either because extracting the data and reports you need is tricky, or because it just takes too much time — and what to do about it to make it a million times faster.

Tracking and understanding your data doesn’t have to be a pitfall for your organization. Enjoy this special bonus episode to carry you through until the podcast starts again this fall.

Resources:

The Long Haul Model article

Rethinking Audience Engagement Panel Hosted by Artelize

We talk about what the experts say about fear of change, resistance to change, and other barriers to change; debunk three big myths about change; and share five things that actually work to drive change effectively at your arts organization.

No matter what role you fill within arts management, leading the change is one of the most important skills you can build. This episode unpacks the research every arts manager and leader needs to know.

And in this episode, we look at how these strategies apply to my own business, Changing the Narrative—and how those same strategies have guided the evolution of my business over the last year or so as we’ve scaled up. 

We walk through my personal experience with growing Changing the Narrative, including the areas I needed to step away from, as well as the areas I decided to lean into further and build out. I also highlight some of the key lessons I've learned in hiring and building an effective team, using data and analytics for direction, and how important of a tool digital content is. My hope is you will find these lessons to be both relatable and applicable to your own arts organization.

The article mentioned several times: Scarcity Mindset Is Killing Your Arts Organization

In this episode, learn five actionable tips on how creating small, emotional connections through specific language creates a big and lasting impact on your revenue. Hone your copywriting skills as a no cost tool to grab your patrons’ attention, fill those seats, and bring in more donations.

For almost every arts organization, writing better, stronger copy is the free solution to upgrade every public facing channel you have, from website to program book, social media to fundraising appeals, subscription brochures to press releases.

The words you use are so powerful, and harnessing better copywriting is key to making every word work harder for you.

This episode covers four tips for you to implement right away to immediately start seeing more revenue—all at absolutely zero cost to your bottom line.

Example content referenced in episode:

• On my first day as CEO of an orchestra, the board chair told me they had just considered shutting down...
•  Can’t play Beethoven faster and save money...
• This is why planned giving is one of the most important things fundraising teams should be working on

Susan Bay Nimoy has served on the board of many arts organizations, including the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Symphony Space in New York, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the Griffith Observatory. She recently endowed The Nimoy Theatre in LA, which is part of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.

Want to know what to say when building major donor relationships in the arts and ultimately soliciting a major gift? Download your free resource, the Major Donor Fast Track Guide.

There is a moral imperative to do this work at arts organizations, but I am also a fan of the business case for diversity. And in this episode, we are talking about what the numbers look like if and when the audience actually does look like the community — and wow, is there money on the table when the audience becomes more diverse.

This episode looks at just how many more tickets would be sold in a year if your audience makeup mirrored that of your community, or at least came close. We talk through the numbers, and I have a free download that does the math for you so you don’t have to.

Get your free Demographic Revenue Calculator and see the potential for sales growth in three easy steps.

The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is known as an international nonprofit conservation organization with an annual budget over $400 million and thousands of staff and employees. They have two local front doors — the San Diego Zoo and the Safari Park — in addition several eco-regional “hubs” around the world.

The global work of San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance is helping the entire ecosystem, and this conversation with immediate past Board Chair Javade Chaudhri exemplifies that having a business mindset does not fly in the face of the mission driven work.

In fact, the data show that nonprofits of all sizes that advocate outperform their peers, and you do not have to be a $400M+ organization to engage in advocacy — it can happen small and locally. Chaudhri is candid about what separates organizations doing that well—having a business mindset being able to execute on that—versus those in his mind who aren’t.

We also talk about a few topics that have become near and dear to my heart in recent years, including company culture and staff compensation (as well as the need to pay staff competitively).

I am so grateful for Javade Chaudhri and him generously sharing his time, wisdom, and expertise. Enjoy his take on how the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and all kinds of arts and culture organizations can run it like a business, and get your free resource to help you start or uplevel your own advocacy work: the Advocacy Cheat Sheet.

It turns out, there are three big things these successful brands are doing differently than arts organizations. This episode breaks it down, as well as offers ways to implement these ideas.

Get your free resource for this episode: 3 Reasons Your Subscriptions are Declining & 11 Ways to Combat It. 

00:00 Introduction to Season Three of The Offstage Mike

00:34 The Theme of Season Three: Running it Like a Business

01:43 The Importance of Subscriptions in the Cultural Sector

02:03 The Current State of the Subscription Economy

02:58 The Decline of Subscriptions in the Arts

03:05 The Discrepancy Between the Arts and Other Industries

06:58 The Three Big Differences in Subscription Models

07:50 The Importance of First Year Subscription Renewals

14:00 The Impact of Price Increases on Subscription Renewals

20:26 The Three Steps to Combat the First Year Cliff

29:13 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

And throughout the season, I’m occasionally bringing in some people who know the business world quite well to help me break it down: board members of our orchestras, operas, ballets, theaters, museums, zoos, and more.

These are the people governing our cultural institutions, who also have incredible professional experience outside the arts, and who are also among the most connected to and engaged with our mission-driven work.

All so that we can Run It Like a Business — without sacrificing the art we produce. Season 3 of the Offstage Mic is coming up right here. Hit “follow” or “subscribe” right now.

To celebrate, we put together something special for you: a live show we recorded just last night at the book launch party here in San Francisco. It’s a conversation with myself and Kelly Harris, Executive Director of Haight Street Art Center.

The book and our conversation is for people and arts organizations who want to:

• Grow audiences and keep them coming back again
• Make our organizations more inclusive
• Get younger attendees in the seats and on the donor rolls
• And generate millions more dollars in revenue, in order to
• Continue to create the art we love—without the stress of figuring out how to afford it

Book details and how to get your copy: https://www.aubreybergauer.com/book

What needs to happen before negotiations ever begin, how training musicians serving in these important roles is critical, and their thoughts on streaming contracts going forward so together we can make the pie bigger for all of us.

National research from Advisory Board for the Arts shows the top driver of employee satisfaction and talent retention in the arts is no longer reputation for artistic excellence, but a strong and healthy company culture.

Karen Freeman, who has a background as a player, as well as degrees from Harvard and MIT, and later at McKinsey as global head of digital & analytics learning for generalist consultants, joins Aubrey to share the findings of this research.

And as mentioned at the top of the episode, if you want some ideas for your summer reading list, here are Aubrey’s book reviews: business books as seen through the lens of an arts manager.

This is the penultimate episode in season two—enjoy!

In this episode, Aubrey is joined by two experts — Mike Warner, Head of Editorial Marketing Partnerships - North America at Believe, and Jamie Freedman, Head of Classical Programming at Pandora — to talk through the play by play (stream by stream?!)

They cover topics including how an ensemble can self-release, how an organization can be empowered to do yourself things a label historically or traditionally would have done and have more control because of it, how the artistic, production, and marketing teams will need to work together, and the nuts and bolts of releasing digital music directly vs going with a distributor.

And if you don't know what all that means or looks like, that's ok too — the whole point of this episode is to learn so you walk away educated and informed. And therefore confident and ready to tackle your next recording project knowing exactly how you'll get maximum ears to listen to it.

Aubrey and Marcia cover what bringing a script to the screen has in common with bringing performances to the stage, expert storytelling tips to apply to your own stories at arts organizations, and the highs and lows of storytelling: what are the best things about storytelling? What’s the biggest challenge?

Pretty much any brand that’s thriving and growing its customer base is good at storytelling, and this episode shares from one of the best storytellers around, so that we can feel empowered to bring our organization’s own stories to life.

In this episode, Aubrey brings in David Taylor, who worked with the Philharmonia in London to do just this. We'll hear the case study of what they did, what worked and what didn't, and some unexpected results they saw.

Get David’s book, The Future of Classical Music - Part 1: A collection of articles, talks, and ideas

Slover Linett research on classical music radio listenership discussed in the opening remarks here.

Hear from Julian Chender, an expert in organization design through his work at Accenture as well as his own company he founded. Together, Aubrey and Julian look at the challenges with the existing structure that's been in place at most arts organizations for the last 40+ years, and how to design the organization for goals that affect everyone going forward.

Links

·     Organization design article Julian and Aubrey co-authored.

·     See Julian’s slides on YouTube.

Learn more about Dallas Black Dance Theatre.

Drew's article for the Wallace Foundation: Can Pandemic Be Catalyst for New Global Arts Ecology?

As more organizations are facing the national trend of donor households down, dollar goals up, Louis Diez is a thought leader with results to back it up across both higher education and classical music.

Learn more about the Donor Participation Project Louis founded: JoinDPP.org

Follow Louis on LinkedIn for great fundraising thought leadership and ideas.

Aubrey and Robbie explore four areas where the arts are doing it differently, and what we can do to update our own practices to maximize the important revenue streams we need: subscriptions, memberships, and donations.

Resources:

The Forever Transaction

The Membership Economy

That's because today, audiences “hire” organizations to solve a problem, meet a need, or do a job they need done in their life. This is the premise of Jobs to Be Done Theory, developed by Harvard Business Professor Clayton Christensen.

In this episode, Clayton Christensen Institute Chief of Staff Ruth Hartt joins Aubrey to talk about the Jobs to Be Done framework through an arts marketing lens.

Ruth also shares examples from the wild — real classical music ads done right and wrong — as she unpacks Jobs to Be Done Theory. If you want to see the visuals Ruth talks about, you can watch that part of the conversation here.

See Ruth’s website and subscribe to her arts marketing hall of fame.

Best-selling author Kevin Oakes is the CEO and founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the leading human capital research company in the world, and he shares how high-performance organizations we’ve all heard of have successfully changed organizational culture.

We don’t have to be giant behemoth orgs or flush with cash to make inroads on culture. A point Kevin emphasizes with actionable advice on how we can keep pushing forward to make our workplace culture better for all of us.

His book: Culture Renovation

We are at an inflection point for arts organizations: audiences are down from pre-pandemic levels, subscriptions on the decline, still confronting systemic discrimination and working to diversify, trying to attract and retain talent, and ultimately reclaim relevance in a complex world. The good news is all of these topics are advancing, even if slowly.

Season two includes 11 new episodes, released every other week, as we bring you interviews from some of my favorite experts on these subjects and others to help us build the vibrant future we know is possible.

The arts can be a tough business, but the narrative is changing, and I’m so glad you’re here to be a part of it.

These questions are all addressed in this final episode of season one. It’s raw, it’s vulnerable, and all of that feels like a good note to close out this pilot project season.

Thanks to everyone who's listened. We’d love to hear from you if you enjoyed it or learned something. And wishing you all the best of luck as you prep for your own seasons starting this fall, from wherever you’re listening.

Resources mentioned:

• Adam Grant’s Four Deadly Sins of Toxic Culture
• Harvard Professor Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk on Power Poses

Sponsors who made this possible:

• Descript
• Lume Cube

This episode covers questions that were asked in a recent interview with San Francisco Classical Voice all about how arts organizations could use data and analytics like Billy Bean and the Oakland A’s did in Moneyball.

Special thanks to San Francisco Classical Voice for covering this topic and for graciously allowing this conversation to be shared with you here.

Read the SFCV article: https://www.sfcv.org/articles/feature/how-performing-arts-world-uses-cyber-analytics-build-audiences

Then, Aubrey covers how to find common ground in negotiations, sharing lessons we can learn from big organizations like the Met Opera, smaller organizations like the California Symphony, and a Harvard Business School professor.

Then, Aubrey addresses a job seeker’s question about what to do when there’s something about their work history they don’t want to come up in an interview.

Resources mentioned:

• What it would look like if attendance trends pre-pandemic were accelerated 10 years
• Post-Pandemic Business Plan
• Long Haul Model for Patron Retention
• Orchestra X User Experience Research

Aubrey also answers a question on the balance between digital engagement and in person offerings. When streaming is often prohibitively expensive, what’s the right digital strategy forward instead?

Resources mentioned:

• Talent Development: Why Most Organizations Don't Invest Much in It, And How the Investment Pays Off
• Learn more about Aubrey’s Summer Uplevel course and coaching

Articles mentioned

• Designing a Modern Org Structure

Musicians Monetizing Education

• Nathan Cole (LA Philharmonic)
• Elizabeth Rowe (Boston Symphony)
• Christopher Still (LA Philharmonic)
• Rob Knopper (Metropolitan Opera)

Organizations Monetizing Education

• Richmond Symphony School of Music
• Beth Morrison Projects Producer Academy
• California Symphony Fresh Look

Business Coach on Monetizing Online Education

• Jennifer Rosenfeld

For more content on the business of arts and culture, follow Aubrey on LinkedIn, Instagram, or the community newsletter.

If you know me, you know I love a good pilot test, and this pilot season will run for eight half-hour-ish episodes, released every other week starting this spring. To submit a question, send a voice recording to hello@aubreybergauer.com.