Use volunteers for non-vital tasks

When it comes to picking the people who are going to run your audience development initiatives (be it the producer of the show, the person writing your email newsletters, or the person sending out your press releases, etc.) organizations generally have two choices: barter for cheap or free using an existing relationship with a volunteer who knows how to do the stuff, or hire someone to do the work (either staff or freelancer).

Many organizations go for the former, thinking that a volunteer or “social relationship” is excited and capable to do the job, maybe even at no cost. And many an organization suffers a lack of fuel in their engines because of that choice.

The free arts website scenario

It’s attractive, I totally agree to that. Let’s say you’re the artistic director at a small theatre company, and you need a new website. You lament about this with your theatre friends (as you should, because it’s fun) and one of them says “Oh, I set up websites, I’d be happy to knock something out for you, free of charge.” And you think to yourself “Yes! New website for no money!”

And indeed, a few weeks or months later (probably longer that you had hoped) he/she launches a pretty good looking site for you. You’re thrilled to announce it. People tell you it looks great. And for awhile, everything goes smashingly, until one day you send an email to your friend, asking he/she to update a section of the site for you, and you don’t get a response. A few days go by. You need to get this updated. You call, and finally get them and they say they have “just being swamped.” But they do the update for you, and things are good again… for a little while.

Then the cycle repeats. He/she is your friend, so you don’t have the heart to tell them to shape it up (and you don’t really have a right to anyway, since you’re getting the service for free). Your relationship starts to go South due to the tension, and he/she wants out of doing the updates. And more mayhem occurs. And what’s really happening is your image is suffering — people can’t get the information they need when they need it. Press people can’t get the photos they need. People can’t see how to purchase tickets. Etc.

Sound familiar? This is a very common occurrence in the nonprofit world.

Organizations have chosen low-cost or free as the most important factor, and for that, they’ve given up reliability, the ability to enforce requests, and ultimately a friendship. And they’ve wasted all of that energy hounding somebody to do work that could have been spent following up on some other marketing idea. The upside just simply doesn’t outweigh the downside.

Volunteers: use them for non-essential tasks

Nobody meant to hurt anybody’s feeling here. It all started with good intentions. But since there was nothing but favors involved, there was no way to enforce people becoming flakes for whatever reason.

One of your goals as the manager of an arts organization is to create a business model that doesn’t allow for flakiness. How do you do that? Pay people who are doing the vital tasks.

You can do this by using volunteers only for non-essential tasks, so if they flake, you’re not hurt. Examples of non-essential tasks are redundancy in house management (have two volunteers, if one doesn’t show, you’re still ok), set painters, dressers, etc.  “Assistants” to everybody where appropriate, so that the main person can have an easier time, but if the volunteer doesn’t show, the main person who is getting paid can still get it done.

The main check is to ask yourself “if this person doesn’t show up for some reason, would I be dead in the water?” If the answer is yes, pay them.

By keeping your vital tasks assigned to people who have a financial interest (however small or large) you gain the ability to keep running your organization like a business, which is how it should be. If someone is not performing the things they are assigned to do, you have the power to let them go and to find someone to replace them, and the people being paid know that, and function with that in mind.

This is a powerful control that shouldn’t give up in the name of low budget.

Marketing and audience development is not something you want to have being done some of the time. There needs to be a system you’ve put in place that guarantees that it is running at least at a minimal level, all the time. And paid staff or freelance help can be set up to do that for you, and will do it, because they want to keep their job or your good business respectively.

Volunteers, as much as they want to help, are not good to count on for reliability (and as I say that, I know that you may have a volunteer that is as reliable as the sun rising — but from my experience that is an exception to the rule.)

But what if we can’t afford to pay people to do those tasks?

If you’re ok with non-reliable performance from your vital people, you can skip paying them. And some people are ok with that level of performance at their arts organization, and I’m not saying that’s not ok, for them. But if you’re struggling with the scenarios I’ve described above, just realize what the cause is, and find a way to fix it.

Maybe that means you do a less-expensive show this season, so that you can pay less in royalties, and use the saved money to hire someone to rely upon to run a marketing campaign for you. Or that you increase your ticket price a couple of dollars so you can pay a small staff. You’re worth it, and they are too.

What you get is marketing that works. Outreach that works. Websites that you can update on your own or know will get updated by your paid help whenever you need it. Lighting designers who want to do this for their art, and still be able to eat. Actors who get paid at least something for their craft. Yes, it costs more in the short term, but the reliability is there for the long term, which leaves you with the peace of mind that it’s getting done, and that you have options if there’s a problem. It’s a nice, relaxing place to be.

Like this post? Please share it with others who you think might benefit from it, via the links below, and subscribe via email or RSS to receive future updates. Ron Evans is an arts marketing and technology consultant with Groupofminds.com in Sunnyvale, CA.

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Get your logins. Store them safely. Celebrate!

Reading time: 10 minutes

Every day is a holiday to somebody. What’s one more to add to the list? Let me give you a little background.

Often, I work with clients who have previously had a volunteer run some important part of their arts marketing arsenal — usually their website, or their email marketing. In many cases, the volunteer is a friend or family member connected to a board member, and the organization is drawn to the promise of free technical help. “My brother is a web developer; let me see if I can talk him into running our website for us!”

The concept of free service

The concept of free service because of a good connection is incredibly attractive to some arts groups where money is especially tight. And sometimes it works out really well for a long time. But it can also easily lead to disaster.

When the board member leaves the board, often the strength of the volunteer connection leaves too. Oh, that free web developer can stick around for awhile, but in many cases the response time to get something updated gets longer and longer. Finally it starts to damage the organization’s ability to manipulate their own marketing information, such as being able to update the website, send out the email, etc. And in the worst cases, your volunteer website updater just disappears into thin air, taking your logins and passwords with them. That’s bad. But it is not as rare as you might think — I’ve now worked with four clients who have had it happen to them. The most recent two needed to register totally new domain names and set up brand new websites at considerable expense, because they couldn’t get access from their previous web developer.

Volunteering isn’t a bad thing. Many arts groups wouldn’t be able to get by if they didn’t use volunteers to get things done. But volunteers need to be managed, and they shouldn’t ever have access to things we don’t have access to ourselves. And that means access to all of your login information to your website, Facebook/Twitter, email marketing software, etc., or what I call “the keys to the kingdom.”

If they have passwords, you should know them too — they should be stored in a word document somewhere and marked “to be used in the case that our web developer disappears.” How do you get this information if you don’t already have it? Simple: ask your developer. But do so carefully.

How to get the logins

Now, a lot of developers are a little paranoid about logins and passwords. And you’ll need to be tactful when asking for this information, and do so in a way that does not make the developer feel like you want to can them. Everybody wants to feel useful, and if you put yourself in their shoes, without knowing the reason for the request, you might be a little nervous too.

The easiest way to get this info is to ask for a “check in meeting” with them. First, compliment them on how much they’ve helped your organization, and mention that things are going great, and that you hope they’ll be able to continue to help your organization for a very long time. Then, tell them that the board is going through a process of doing a record keeping/information inventory, and they would like a document with all login information, passwords, urls, etc. so in the *knock on wood* case that something were to happen to any staff member who holds key information, the organization could continue with its work. Then say “Even though it’s a little bit of a hassle for us to gather this info together, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a reasonable and smart request.” That last part is important to gain agreement, as nobody wants to be thought of as unreasonable. Then, set a date that the information is due by, get their agreement, tell them that you’ll be updating the document every 6 months, and finish off with another compliment on their work. Finally, have the info that has been provided to you examined by a different  technology friend of yours, to make sure everything you need is there.

How else can you protect your access?

Potential problems don’t just come from the web developer side of things; the arts organization needs to think in advance and do its part too. For example, make sure that your website isn’t hosted by the volunteer web developer. It should be hosted with a reliable 3rd-party company such as dreamhost.com or mediatemple.com (those are just two examples of many), so that a potential problem with your volunteer doesn’t mean a problem with your web hosting. As you make technology decisions, ask yourself “Will I be relying on only this individual to gain access, or could someone else get access if I needed them to?”

Any reputable web developer or “tech person” won’t hold on to your information. It isn’t theirs — it’s yours. They should only be acting as a steward of your data, making updates as needed. If they balk, find out why, and try to talk to them. It’s always easier to blame the request on somebody else (such as your board) so that you don’t get into a shooting match. But if they won’t give it up, you’ve already got a problem, and it’s better to know about it now than later.

At that point, you should try to get the original board member involved and see if they can come to your rescue to help the situation. But if you follow the outline of the conversation above, you should be able to get all the important info you need without causing any problems, and you’ll still have your volunteer working with you.

But it’s not just for the “problem people”

“Ahh but our tech volunteer is fabulous… he/she would never disappear like that.” Great! In most cases, that will be the case.  Then please consider getting this information from them simply a form of digital insurance. Something you know you’ve planned for, even though it may never happen. And this is no-cost insurance — the very best kind!

Personally I think that volunteers should be only used in situations where the volunteer could be easily replaced with somebody else. The very nature of volunteers is that they are more flexible than an employee, but they don’t have a paycheck governing their behavior or trustworthiness. I’m not trying to put down volunteers. Love them, thank them, count on them, but please don’t risk having them be the only ones who can do “that one thing,” when that one thing can break your organization. Most likely, you now have and will continue to have a great, positive working relationship with your technical person, and this article shouldn’t cast a shadow on that. Just have your info stored for safe keeping!

Spread the word!

So, to help spread the word that arts organizations should walk through this process and recapture access to their own login information, I am declaring this Thursday, September 24th, “National Know Your Arts Marketing Logins Day.” On this day, across the land, I want arts groups everywhere to open their email, and contact their tech helper to get this information. Store it for safe keeping in a couple of places and/or share it with another staff member in your organization for redundancy. What will take your 5 minutes to do could help spare you weeks of lost time, ticket sales, and happiness.

So spread the word! This Thursday is “National Know Your Arts Marketing Logins Day.” Will you celebrate with us? (And if you’re reading this after Thursday, please just go and gather the info now!)

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