ENAGE, the regional assessment and cultural planning process undertaken by CNY Arts in 2013-14, provided much research and useful information about the challenges faced by arts, culture, history, and heritage organizations, as well as perceptions of the general public, in Cortland, Herkimer, Madison, Oneida, Onondaga and Oswego counties.

For instance, of the 111 cultural organizations that fully participated in the ENGAGE agency survey, fully one third reported having no funding for marketing and promotion. That means no designated staff person and no promotional budget. And of the 119 organizations who identified their top three priorities, "increasing effectiveness of collaborative marketing, messaging and promotion" and "increasing my organization's visibility both inside and outside the six-county Central New York region" were tied for first place.  365 individual artists responded with similar top priorities, asking for help with marketing and promotional assistance, first and foremost.

And in focus groups, the stories we heard were often about why marketing support is a growing need... that during the economic downturn, organizations were understandably reluctant to cut programming, and so cuts were made to administration, marketing, and fundraising. This reduction in capacity has made it difficult for organizations to earn revenue. And without that earned revenue, organizations are struggling to rebuild and capture an adequate share of the market to support their cultural offerings.  In total, organizations surveyed allocated 8% of their budgets to marketing and promotion, as opposed to 78% on programming.  A financial allocation framework developed by the Nonprofit Finance Fund (since the Great Recession) emphasizes the importance of a balance between mission, program, capital, and capacity. Strength in one area cannot compensate for weaknesses in another. All are important.

In the meantime we learned from the over 6000 public opinion survey responses that:

• the public is very interested in participating in arts and culture (67% "very interested")
• the public believes that it is easy to find out about arts and cultural activities (59% "easy" or "very easy")
• BUT when asked, they said they only know a little about arts and culture activities taking place (52% "I know a little")

This disconnect between valuing arts and culture, believing it's easy to find out about, but then not knowing very much about the arts in their area is revealing... our messaging must be much, much stronger to get through. Having this information gives our industry an opportunity to strategize collective solutions that benefit organizations, individual artists and potential audiences.

CNY Arts is working actively to address this important priority. Others are working on it, too, and we are either partnering with these entities seeking to partner with them. We'll share some of these strategies with you next month. In the meantime, if you have strategies and ideas that would help marketing efforts, particularly collaborative marketing, we'd really like to hear from you! Contact me at executivedirector@cnyarts.org.