To Thrive, Do Work That Interests Donors, Don’t Cut Programs, Says Leader

To succeed, arts groups must believe their work is never done, says Michael Kaiser, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, in his new book, The Cycle: A Practical Approach to Managing Arts Organizations.

Mr. Kaiser, who will step down from his post in December 2014, discusses his advice for nonprofit leaders in an interview with The Chronicle.

What is the cycle approach you promote in the book?

The whole concept of the cycle emerged when I was doing a 50-state tour in 2009-10.

Listening to people talk around the country, the most successful organizations were the ones that had a very substantial cadre of people who cared about them, and also it became clear the art and the marketing helped build this family. If you kept nurturing this family, you would continue to build the resources you need, and out of this notion came the cycle.

I learned how programming and marketing affect the financial health of an organization. So often one sees arts organizations that believe that the way you make health is to cut and to do less.

What I’ve learned is that is exactly the wrong approach to creating fiscal health.

When you aren’t interesting to the people who can support you, they find other things to be interested in. When an arts organization isn’t doing interesting art or communicating well about the work they do, then potential audience members and donors and board members and volunteers look elsewhere, and they support other institutions.

What recommendations can you offer to arts leaders?

If you present a happy image to others, they’re going to be more drawn to your organization. To separate the real fear that we all face at times in our careers and to live with that at home and not in public is crucial.

If you want to run an organization, you have to know you’re going to spend a lot of time. I’ve never found somebody who can do it well working 40 hours a week. I do believe a lot in planning, and I do believe a lot in thinking far ahead. You can do more interesting, far-scale projects if you plan them further in advance. You can plan out the life of your organization and your personal life better if you have a sense of what’s coming up rather than living on the spur of the moment, as too many arts organizations do.

A lot of arts organizations don’t know how to embrace people, don’t know how to welcome them into their organization and make them feel loved and make them feel part of a family.

We don’t think enough from the donors’ point of view, how to make their social life revolve around our organization.

You write in the book that arts groups are snobbish when it comes to sports. Why is that?

It’s not so much disdain about sports as anger. Why is so much time, energy, and money spent on sports and so much less on the arts?

Sports teams and leagues do a great job of building allegiance. We can learn from that. We can learn about how to build a family of people who feel like their lives revolve around our organization. When we do that well, when we build this large, diverse family of people who feel that way about us, we have a real opportunity to build an ongoing level of support that allows arts organization to flourish even during bad economic times.

After you step down from the CEO job, what’s next?

I will continue to manage the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the Kennedy Center.

We’re expanding the number of clients because I’ll be full-time. We’re doing a lot more consulting for individual organizations that need help. We’re also doing a lot more internationally—we’ve had a three-year program in Ireland, and we’re now starting one in Croatia and Vietnam.

We tend to be in demand when there’s change. Arts funding is changing in most countries as governments cut their support. Growth in the arts: We see an awful lot in parts of Asia and the Arab world.

How can arts groups stay fresh and relevant?

It’s really about dreaming. The best artists have work they’re dreaming to do, they’re dying to do. And when they happen, they can be so magical.

What’s happened, unfortunately, with the economic climate we live in is that so many organizations, rather than dreaming, are thinking about “What can I afford?” rather than “What’s the kind of project I’d really love to do?”

The reason why I stress this longer-term artistic planning is that if you have a project you really want to do, then schedule it—not for this year; you may not have the resources—but schedule it three, four, five years out.

Spend that amount of time looking for those resources and building excitement around that project.

It’s those kinds of projects that really transform the way a community looks at an arts organization.