Organizational Development

At the Chamber Music America national conference, our new Artistic Director, David Arnott, met with colleagues and peers at the national level, as well as managers and booking agents of chamber music artists that we present on our concert series. He gained ideas of which performers to book on our series for the next and upcoming seasons, having heard groups at the conference showcases and other performances. He came away from the conference with verbal agreements for all six of our 2016-2017 concert season guest artists. He learned about the trends and new ideas for directing and managing a chamber music series. Pertaining to the corporate support development, Katrina Pierson and Amy Nord from Vela Strategy provided strategic guidance, coaching and training to develop the Chamber Music Society’s base of corporate support from concert sponsors and general contributions. They met with the Executive Director to review our current sponsorship/corporate support, strategies and gain input on the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses and challenges of the current program. We set one, three and five year goals for expanding revenue through corporate support. We developed a process for identifying and linking connections between Chamber board members, donors and supporters and the businesses that have the means to serve as a corporate partner. We researched comparable peer organizations for sponsor levels and benefits. Vela developed a written strategy for expanding corporate sponsorship support, including sponsor levels and benefits, prospect identification/connecting, cultivating, asking, and stewarding. Katrina Pierson presented the strategy and trained the board of directors on their role in supporting growth of this program. We can see a positive outcome already in that we have increased our concert sponsorships for the upcoming season by 180%.