Project Grant

A Choral Community will feature between 5-7 choirs spanning generations and organizations. There will be roughly 195 singers of all ages on stage. We anticipate over 350 audience members. We will look for an overall satisfaction rating of 4/5 on an audience survey. We will look for a high satisfaction rating from choir directors on the offerings of the project. We will reach 5,000 people on Facebook with our multiple concert posts; generate 25 click-throughs to our website; and 200 post likes.; Once completed, ‘A Choral Community’ will have featured between 5-7 Central Minnesota choirs spanning generations and organizations with at least 195 singers of all ages on stage. We anticipate over 390 patrons to have attended this concert compared to last year’s count of 350. We will receive an overall satisfaction rating of at least 4/5 on our audience survey indicating success of the project. We will look for a high satisfaction rating from the participating choir directors on the offering of the project and how it served their organization. After the finale, we will be looking for a favorable audience reaction – verbal and nonverbal (e.g. standing ovation). One more indication of success will be increased activity on our social media profiles. We will reach an estimated 5,000 people on Facebook with our multiple concert posts leading up to the event, and post-event; generate 25 click-throughs to our website, and over 200 post likes, anticipating greater growth from last year. Count number of guest artists on stage. Count ticket sales, anticipating increase over last year. Tally audience survey. Tally survey for guest artists on how this project served them. Use Facebook page Insight Report to determine community reach. Counting ticket sales is one of the evaluation methods that we will use to determine if our marketing and promotional materials were effective (print, email, billboard, online streaming, and website impressions). An observed increase in audience size over last year will indicate success. A survey will be used to determine how we can serve our audiences better at this and future concerts. A paper survey will be available in the lobby for patrons who prefer to fill out a hard copy of a survey, while an online survey will appear as a link in the program, along with the website address and a QR Code for those patrons who use smartphones. Both the paper and online results will be tabulated into a spreadsheet and read amongst the staff of Youth Chorale of Central Minnesota and its Board of Directors. We will be looking for ratings of 4’s and 5’s (5 = Excellent) on the feedback responses. A separate survey will be conducted and sent to the directors of our guest choirs where we will ask for their feedback on how this project served their particular choir and if they felt that singing with - and for - a difference audience was a good experience. While it will be difficult to determine how many people are reading and seeing our particular advertisement on the billboards, we can say that the estimated number of cars driving past the billboard near St Joseph, Minnesota receives an average of 18,000 cars daily; while the traffic count near the Municipal Athletic Complex in St Cloud receives a daily average of 23,000 vehicles. Audience reactions will be observed during and after the concert and in the weeks to come, new verbal responses will help us determine whether anything different needs to be done in preparation for next year’s collaborative concert. A non-verbal standing ovation at the close of the concert will signify favorable audience reaction. An increase in activity on our social media profiles will point to the success of the event and to the awareness of the choir(s) in general. We will count the number of Facebook “likes” and Twitter “follows” on our sites. We anticipate that our post-concert announcement and/or video will be seen by well over 500 people on our Facebook page, and all post-concert status update replies will be read.