S3E08 • Tues, Oct 20, 2026   • Duration: 27 mins

Why Your Budget Should Start With People, Not Percentages

What if your next budget started not with last year's revenue, but with the people who will make next year's revenue possible?

Too often, arts and cultural organizations build budgets around financial targets rather than the audience relationships and behaviors needed to achieve them. Revenue projections look backward, costs rise, and the gap becomes someone else's problem to solve.

But what changes when we start with people instead of percentages?

In this episode of Leading the Way, the TRG Arts team explores how people-based budgeting connects audience behavior, financial planning, and artistic ambition. From understanding the households behind your revenue to treating marketing as an investment, the conversation offers a more strategic approach to planning for sustainable growth.

Key takeaways:

• Start with people, not percentages. Understand the households and behaviors behind your revenue targets, not just the numbers you hope to achieve.
• Connect financial planning with audience strategy. Build revenue and expense budgets around the audiences you're trying to reach, retain, and grow.
• Recognize that every production has a different audience. Tailor marketing investment to each show's mix of new, returning, and reactivated buyers.
• Treat marketing as an investment. Measure the cost of acquiring and retaining audiences, and the return across productions, channels, and segments.
• Use relationships to support artistic ambition. Audience intelligence helps leaders make informed decisions, manage risk, and plan beyond a single season.
• Start small, but start with evidence. Choose one revenue stream and identify the households behind it, separating new buyers from returning ones.

Listen to this episode: