On October 2nd the Foundation Center offered a special program about the "Big List" collaboration in partnership with Craigslist Foundation, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, and Northern California Grantmakers for our ongoing "Power of Partnership" series. This post provides a summary of the content covered by the program and is from Marisela Orta, Program Associate, Member Services for Northern California Grantmakers.
Program Description & Panelists:
At this second Power of Partnership event, we took an in-depth look at the "Big List" and how San Francisco is one of the many cities around the country where arts organizations are beginning to share their proprietary marketing lists to increase the sustainability of arts and culture city-wide. This project has been funded by the Wallace Foundation, San Francisco Foundation, and Grants for the Arts and managed by Theatre Bay Area in an effort to match if not exceed the success in other urban centers.
We took a look at how this project began, the challenges that arose and how they were able to turn what was previously a competitive environment into a collaborative effort. We also highlighted how many of the experiences in creating the Bay Area Big List are applicable to creating collaboration across the nonprofit sector.
Panelists:
The San Francisco Big List, administered by Theatre Bay Area, is a database representing a collaboration between nonprofit theatre and dance organizations in the San Francisco market. The Big List database is a consolidated source for participating mambers to easily, readily, and inexpensively access mailing list data to further their direct marketing objectives.
The Big List provides us with an exciting opportunity to examine collaboration in the real world to ask:
- How can different like-minded organizations with like-minded audiences come together and share their mailing lists?
- What are the lessons learned from this type of collaboration?
- How do you wrestle with privacy issues?
Background
The concept of The Big List originated in Pittsburgh, PA where because of shrinking population, the major arts organizations came together to develop a new strategy for growing their audiences. Driven out of a need to survive, the organizations pooled their audience databases. The basic concept was to go after "low hanging fruit" that if someone was already attending the ballet, they were more likely to come to a theatre performance or the symphony. Despite any fears of "losing" audience mambers to another arts organization, instead each organization saw their audiences grow without a loss of subscribers. And, as a result, individuals who were already attending arts events began to go more.
The Wallace Foundation, based in New York, took notice and began an initiative to increase arts participation that targeted different cities across the country, providing the funds to start Big Lists in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. Local funders such as Grants for the Arts and The San Francisco Foundation were brought in as partners of the Wallace Foundation to provide their knowledge of the Bay Area arts community. Theatre Bay Area, a service organization for the theatre and dance communities, joined the process as a central hub for the nonprofit arts organizations and funders.
In its first year, the San Francisco Big List has 69 organizations and plans to expand in 2009 to include organizations in the East Bay and South Bay.
Getting The Process Started
Panelist Brad Erickson, Executive Director of Theatre Bay Area (TBA), stresses that service organizations are in a good position to pitch this type of collaboration process to funders. As a service organization, TBA and funders share the same basic mission: to support the field.
Erickson recommends grantees see their relationship to funders as more about partnership than about transaction. Funders, according to Erickson, want to know what's going on here on the ground and grantees can provide that perspective.
The Big List here in San Francisco came about as part of a more informal pitch, Erickson explains. By sharing with local with local arts funders an exciting model of collaboration in Pittsburgh, funders became intrigued and decided to engage TBA in developing a similiar Big List in the Bay Area.
A Role for Funders As Well
Panelist Kary Schulman, Director for Grants for the Arts, recognizes that there can be a disinclination to collaborate, that it can be viewed as a burden. Schulman reframes that idea by suggesting that collaboration is more like sharing and connecting.
Funders can be coaches for the process by bringing together various organizations and providing leverage that encourages organizations to participate.
How Does the Big List Work?
Clay Lord, Marketing and Advertising manager at TBA also works as the coordinator for the Big List. A New York company, Enertex, does all of the searches on behalf of the participants and maintains the lists by eliminating duplicates and updating changes of address. Currently, the Big List household count is over 300,000.
The rules for engagement are simple:
- Participating organizations cannot permanently append information from the Big List to their own mailing lists.
- Participating organizations cannot use the Big List for fundraising, therefore they can only use it to advertise performances or season events.
- TBA receives a copy of each mailing that will go out to review.
- Participating organizations never see the names on the Big List.
- A bonded mailing house receives the lists and the mailing (psotcard, brochure, etc.).
Because Enterex provides detailed demographic information for the individuals on the list (i.e. income, race, marital status, children) the queries can vary in complexity. The more complex the query, the higher its cost.
Costs and Benefits
A Wallace Foundation grant covers the entry cost for participating organizations. participating organizations therefore need only pay to pull a list for a mailing. The cost is determined by the complexity of the requested list. The average cost of a list for about 1,200 names is $200.
Along with pulling a list for a specific mailing, a participating organization can also request a report on their own audiences to determine additional information about them such as demographics, and what other events and organizations they attend.
Privacy
When you join an organization's listserv you often receive an assurance that they won't "share your information with anyone." In the case of the Big List the participating organizations cannot have such a policy because they are indeed sharing your information.
The information may be shared, but no one is really seeing it. Yes, the participating organizations have pooled their lists into a single database, but Enertex manages the data, the searches, and pulls the lists upon request. Those lists are never shared with the participating organizations. The pulled lists are sent to the bonded mailing house.
Now, there is a concern that people won't want to receive mailings from arts organizations they've never heard of. In truth, most of the individuals on the big list are already actively attending multiple performances, so they are likely to appreciate learning about more artistic events. However, an individual can be removed from the Big List by contacting Theatre Bay Area.
Why Did You Join?
To gain some perspective on why an organization might choose to join the Big List, panelists Randy Taradash, Audience Development and Promotions Manager at American Conservatory Theatre, and Sherri Young, Founder and Executive Director at the African-American Shakespeare Company, explained the appeal of the Big List.
According to Randy Taradash at American Conservatory Theatre (ACT), on some level this type of list sharing was already happening in the Bay Area. He'd been calling Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Opera, and other similar-sized arts organizations to share names. The Big List saves Randy countless hours and in a sense is a smarter way to do what he was already doing: consolidating lists from multiple sources.
Taradash sees the Big List as a money saver. By pulling lists from the Big List database, he's able to cultivate a list of people who are likely to buy a ticket to ACT. For example, when he requests a list from Enertex, he asks for individuals who are on multiple organization lists which creates a profile for theater patrons who are likely to go to ACT.
Growing an audience can only be accomplished, Taradash adds, when you go outside your home. The Big List allows you to do that.
Sherri Young admits she joined the Big List out of peer pressure. As a small organization she couldn't fathom adding more to their current organization's mailing list of 7,000 names. But, she had nothing to lose and once assured that no one would see her own list at African-American Shakespeare Company, she decided to try it.
The first true test of the Big List for Young came when her company needed to advertise and upcoming production of Tattuffe. Needing to connect with a different audience than the one they usually had, Young went to the Big List. The result: yes, the audience was different from the usual one. But this audience had never had never been to the center before, never knew they existed. She suspects that it was the Big List that had brought them to Young's theatre.
Young did point out a drawback to the privacy issue. her new audience mambers assumed they were now on the African-American Shakespeare Company's mailing list because thay received the Tartuffe mailing. But because participating organizations never see who's on the Big List, those new audience mambers have to sign up to Young's mailing list on their own accord.
As for Young's capacity issue, she's still mailing out about 7,000 postcards, however, its the best possible 7,000 because of the Big List.
Clay Lord, the Big List coordinator, adds that it's not about mailing to the entire Big List, but about making your mailing list the best it can be.
Advice on Collaborating
- Do it cautiously. - Kary Shulman, Director, Grants for the Arts
- No one is doing the exact same thing as we are. We offer like things but in unique different packages. We can offer a really big menu. - Randy Taradash, Audience Development and Promotions Manager, American Conservatory Theatre
- This collaboration worked because there is Theatre Bay Area as a service organization, a third party managing the process with policies and a set up structure. They were the go-between, the hub for the other collaborators. - Sherri Young, Founder and Executive Director, African-American Shakespeare Company
- Have one-on-one conversations with the people who will be the key players, cultivate that buy-in, it's important. And listen to them, to their concerns. Brad Erickson, Executive Director, Theatre Bay Area
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