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Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
HR Priorities, Trends & Practices

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored HR policies, trends and practices at arts and cultural organizations.

Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Board Governance

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored board governance structures and procedures at arts and cultural organizations.

Signature Study
ABA Research Team
The Compelling Employer: Attracting and ...

This season ABA is launching The Compelling Employer, a groundbreaking research initiative examining the employment preferences of arts and culture employees across genres and geographies. This work will build on ABA’s 2022 work on The Compelling Offer. The pandemic may be behind us, but staff acquisition and retention remain core industry-wide concerns. ABA is revisiting this initiative to understand how staff preferences have changed and what organizations can do to attract and retain high performers.

Our Compelling Employer survey uses conjoint analysis (also known as trade-off analysis) to give arts and culture leaders a much clearer picture of what employees want in a job, and what they are willing to trade off to get it. This newly updated survey will seek to understand what staff value in their managers, pay structures, culture and office environments. In addition, we will profile best practices in improving manager quality, shifting to pay for performance, and cultivating culture change from both inside and outside the arts and culture industry.

The Compelling Employer: Attracting and Retaining Arts and Culture Professionals
Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Community Engagement

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored community engagement at arts and cultural organizations.

Signature Study
ABA Research Team
Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing ...

In our post-pandemic arts world, many arts organizations are discovering that most of the patrons that are going to come back have come back already. Even organizations with healthy audiences right now are facing challenging budgeting environments, so the need to build a new base of customers and to increase attendance by casual audiences and visitors is acute.

ABA is deploying a survey of marketing resource deployment, activities and other behaviors in order to assess quantitatively the marketing drivers behind healthy attendance.

Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing Practices that Accelerate Audience Growth

2021

Future Priorities in Arts Organizations

As arts organizations safely reopen their doors this fall, arts leaders must leverage this unique moment of return. To help think forward to competing stakeholder demands in a post-pandemic environment, our recent Arts Executive Poll surveyed leaders at arts organizations to understand how they are strategizing for the long-term future.

Benchmarks on Ticket Sale Tactics

As arts organizations open their doors and reopen to the public in this new season, ticket sales are top of mind for audience return. To understand how teams are innovating on this front, our recent Arts Executive Poll surveyed leaders at arts organizations about how they are implementing affordable ticket initiatives to remain accessible to a broad audience and offering complimentary tickets to help fill out houses and venues.

Team Morale

With the start of September, arts organizations are re-centering themselves and launching new seasons once again. To provide a check-in during these beginning stages, our recent Arts Executive Poll surveyed leaders of arts organizations about the prevailing mood among staff as well as ways that leaders are keeping teams motivated amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic.

Returning To “Normal”

As vaccine roll-outs continue across the world, arts organizations are starting to move more actively into "return-mode." But with the promise of large in-person gatherings comes the challenges of planning for both safety and org success. Our recent Arts Executive Poll surveyed leaders on a variety of topics related to bringing staff, artists, and audiences/visitors back.

The Future of Digital

Many arts organizations have made great strides in digital content and experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.  But with the return to in-person experiences (hopefully) drawing nearer, many arts organizations are starting to think about how to evolve their digital strategies for the future.  Our recent Arts Executive poll surveyed leaders on their future plans for digital.