Analytics & Research

Arts Club Theatre Company puts data to work

Thanks to advances in CRM technology, arts organizations now live in a world awash with data. Getting data points is not usually the hard part. What’s difficult is taking action on what the data tells us and making changes to strategy to cause metrics to move up or down. That’s what makes Arts Club Theatre Company’s most recent success story so impressive.

This Vancouver-based theatre company has been a TRG client since 2008. In the first two years, Arts Club saw $3 million in earned revenue growth. Since then, Arts Club’s focus on building patron loyalty resulted in a further 30% increase in single ticket and subscription revenue. 

This post is cross-posted on the National Center for Arts Research blog.

Jill Robinson,  President & CEO, TRG Arts

 “How do we stack up?”

Everyone is curious about how their arts organization compares with others like them. There’s really not been a good place to find that information, though.

Until now.

Recently, our partners at the National Center for Arts Research launched the NCAR Dashboard. It uses data from DataArts (formerly the Cultural Data Project) to explore how organizations from a variety of sizes and artistic disciplines perform on a variety of standardized financial and operational indicators, called KIPI’s. Even better, it allows you to compare your organization to others in its own size category and artistic genre.

Developing arts patrons as a community

September 21 at 1 ET/10 PT

Is there too much theatre for patrons in D.C. to support? That was one of the questions that launched this study. Find out the answer in this webinar.

Seven theatres. 10 seasons of data. One community. Learn what this study reveals about theatre patrons and their buying and giving habits. The importance of audience development and retention shines through, in light of data analysis on how Washington, D.C. theatres are attracting and holding on to patrons. Zoom in on trends in patronage in this community, including new theatre-goers and patrons who attend multiple theatres. Learn about the clusters of patrons in this community who look demographically or transactionally similar. Unlock the secrets of audience behavior that may point to trends in your own community. 

This guest post by Zannie Voss of the National Center for Arts Research is cross-posted to the NCAR blog.

There is a conversation growing nationally around data-informed decision-making in arts and cultural organizations. The National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) stands firmly in the belief that using data to inform managerial decisions is a critical factor in the sustainability and transformation of the arts and cultural field as a whole. It isn’t about data for the sake of data, it’s about the end-goal of healthier organizations that have stable and expanded resources to dedicate to pursuit of mission. TRG, one of NCAR’s partners, has been a leading advocate for this type of analysis for many years and the organizations TRG serves have benefitted as a result.

There is no “one size fits all” performance measure. Instead, metrics for organizational health are as varied as the field itself. So this begs the question: What are the metrics that matter?