SCENE CHANGE 2

The Five REAL Responsibilities of Nonprofit Arts Boards

Alan Harrison

Today, nonprofit arts organizations are rushing into an elitist whirlpool of irrelevance. They're the only companies in the whole nonprofit sector where the beneficiary is also the donor. Donors donate so that donors may attend. In SCENE CHANGE, the first book in the series, we dived into the reasons that the arts have become simultaneously elitist and irrelevant in this Pre-Post-Pandemic Era in America. In SCENE CHANGE 2, we offer specific board responsibilities in order to create the space for the kind of charity for which communities are clamoring. This is a targeted list of the ways in which today's nonprofit arts organizations (theaters, symphonies, ballets, museums, operas, and all the rest) will have to significantly change their whole structure and the prism in which they do work. Companies that make these changes will be giving themselves the best chance to succeed in 2024 and beyond. Those that don't, won't.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Alabama, Mon Amour
• Is Your Board Broken? (How Would You Know?)
• The Very Meaning of Productivity
• “… None of Its Earnings May Inure to Any Private Shareholder or Individual.”
• Donate Now or We’ll Shoot This Bunny
• The Five Responsibilities
• Responsibility #1: Determine Why the Company Needs to Exist
• Responsibility #2: Raise the Funds to Pay for Why You Do What You Do
• Responsibility #3: Take You to Your Leader
• Responsibility #4: Find Others — Especially If They’re Not Like You At All
• Responsibility #5: Be a Zealot, Not an Ambassador
• Responsibilities 6 through ∞: Learning and Governing, Among Others
• Epilogue
• Related Books. Read Them All, If You Can. And More.
• About Alan Harrison
• A Special Note to You, the Reader
• Back Cover