sessions

Featured Luncheon Speaker!

Author and consultant Patricia Martin will look at the forces reshaping our culture and how organizations and people can thrive in this period of disruptive change. Based on her book, RenGen: Renaissance Generation, Martin shares insights on a cultural movement created by the confluence of art, education, entertainment and business that has as its center a powerful new player: the cultural consumer. Her thinking goes beyond standard demographics to paint a new picture of the American consumer as a thinking, expressive individual. This session will be rich with hands-on advice and in-depth insights into the psyche of the cultural consumer.

Weaving storytelling with hard-hitting research, Patricia Martin points the way for a new cadre of arts leaders facing challenges such as:

• How do I speak to a broader audience when customers want to be treated as individuals?
• How do I build partnerships with sponsors when competition is ever more intense for shrinking budgets?
• How do I stay relevant in a culture undergoing gale force change?

Presenters:

• Patricia Martin, LitLamp Communications Group, Inc., Chicago, Illinois

Back to Schedule

Sponsorship Boot Camp

Raising corporate sponsorship money presents its own set of issues, challenges, and opportunities.

• Do you feel like you can’t break into the inner sanctum?
• Does meeting a corporate funder make you nervous?
• Or do you feel that they just don’t "get it"?

This corporate Sponsorship Boot Camp offers tangible tips on what works in today’s tough marketplace, and a practical application of those lessons in a live role playing session!

The morning features sponsorship expert Alice Sachs Zimet from Arts + Business Partners, New York, who will give a bird’s eye perspective of how business is thinking in today’s economy. You will learn:

• the elements of what works and what doesn’t in the tough world of corporate sponsorship.
• the difference between sponsorship and philanthropy and how to create logical marketing links with a potential sponsor.

You will leave this class with a greater understanding of the corporate mindset, the strategies to make your approach more effective, and the know-how to turn a corporation into a sponsor.

New this year! An interactive role playing session in the afternoon! Using the strategies and insights learned from the morning sessions, delegates will be divided into teams, and assigned to represent either an arts organization, a corporation or act as judge. Each arts team must "pitch" the corporate prospect, and the corporate team will have to come to a formal decision as to whether it will fund the project, and for how much. Let’s see who gets the money!

Presenters:

• Alice Sachs Zimet, Arts + Business Partners, New York, New York

Back to Schedule

The Pricing Institute

Under constant pressure to increase revenues, many cultural organizations use antiquated or sub-optimal pricing schemes that do not capture the full potential of demand.

• Are you worried that you’re offering discounts to those who are most able to pay?
• Are you able to adjust prices in response to actual sales patterns?

This full-day intensive workshop offers pricing decision-makers a solid grounding in the economic principles of pricing and a framework for considering future pricing decisions. Different approaches to pricing will be illustrated through a series of case studies involving a range of arts presenters and producers.

The session will be led by Tim Baker and Steven Roth, leaders in pricing strategy for the cultural sector, and moderated by Alan Brown, principal of WolfBrown.

Presenters:

• Tim Baker, Baker Richards Consulting
• Steven Roth, Boston, Massachusetts

Back to Schedule