Social profit and true fans
On June 25th and 26th, 2009, I attended the Vancouver Arts Summit which was jointly presented by 2010 Legacies Now and the Alliance for Arts and Culture.
About 200 people attended consisting of artists, arts organizations and funders from Metro Vancouver. More of these summits will be produced throughout BC in the next couple of years.
The keynote speaker, Diane Ragsdale was really fantastic. (Her Keynote is posted on the Alliance for Arts website: Surviving the Culture Change ) She is a program officer at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York. An interesting aspect of her message that I took away was that perhaps we could change the term “non-profit” to “social-profit.” It is a more positive way of looking at what these types of organizations do. They add value to society. I still run into people who don’t really get what non-profit means and I can’t help but think that in the arts community, it also doesn’t help the “poverty” mentality that persists. Social profit just sounds a heck of a lot more positive.
During her keynote, Diane also referenced author Kevin Kelly who made a huge impact on me back in 1999 when I read his book New Rules for the New Economy. (He has the book posted on his website and now suggests it’s as relevant today as it was in 1999 except that he would change the title to “New Rules for the Network Economy.”) Diane’s reference was directed at a blog Kevin Kelly wrote called 1,000 True Fans which explores how artists (or arts organizations, for that matter) need 1,000 true fans to reach the critical point for success. It’s a great blog read.
The “1,000 True Fans” concept is so interesting to me because what it means is that an artist—or, I would maintain, also arts organizations—need to create better one-to-one, meaningful relationships with their fans (customers, members). Having been the executive director at two non-profit arts service organizations, I can attest to how difficult this is, but how rewarding and beneficial it can be. It also strikes me as unfortunate that so few organizations actually nurture and work at making their members “true fans.” It’s not hard, but it does take time. I can see how some of the new Web 2.0 tools can really help to make this possible and given that I work with arts organizations and artists, it’s exciting to be able see how these concepts could be implemented.
