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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
Rental Income

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored rental income at arts and cultural organizations.

Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Community Engagement

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

Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Development Operations

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored development operations 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

Digital Arts and Culture

Digital Investments

As most arts and cultural organizations have resumed their full in-person services, the place of digital productions and overall digital investments remains unclear. Are organizations maintaining the capabilities and activities they developed during closure, or are they shifting resources away from those efforts? Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on how they are reimagining the place of digital in their day-to-day operations, and the types of digital activities they are discontinuing or maintaining from closure.

Digital Usage, Monetization, and NFTs

Digital strategies, especially related to monetization of digital content, vary significantly across organizations. Our latest Arts Executive Poll asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on how they are implementing digital strategies moving forward and their priorities for digital programming, monetization targets, resources, and new technologies.

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. 

Demystifying Digital Content Monetization: Lessons Learned from Arts Organizations During the Closure

Demystifying Digital Content Monetization: Lessons Learned from Arts Organizations During the Closure

Learning from the accelerated digital shift of the COVID-19 closures, our initiative examined how arts organizations can use digital content not only to build audiences and keep patrons loyal, but also to generate necessary funding for future activities.

While direct revenue may be less likely for new digital offerings, there are important benefits beyond earned income such as donation success, audience learning, and future value.