The Nonprofit Virtual Gala, Version 2.0
This article is part of a library created by Harvard Business School Club of New York’s Community Partners for benefit of their nonprofit clients.
Co-authors:
Lisa Argrette Ahmad and Jingping Zhang, Arts & Culture Advisors to Harvard Business School Club of New York's Community Partners. Ms. Ahmad is Founder & Principal of Second Wave Advisory.
ARTICLE SUMMARY
The following are the three key considerations covered in this article for planning your nonprofit’s next virtual gala:
Adapt upcoming galas to the appropriate online format for audiences and supporters.
Incorporate tactical lessons from 2020 to increase attendance and fundraising in the future.
Integrate crisis management processes and structures for long-term collaborative brainstorming, decision-making, and staff skill development.
According to a report by Brookings, only four months into the pandemic, the fine and performing arts industries suffered estimated losses of 1.4 million jobs and $42.5 billion in sales, which is 50% of all jobs in those industries and more than a quarter of all lost sales nationwide.
Yet, in the innovative and resilient spirit of the performing arts community we love and serve, many nonprofits reimagined and pivoted their operations and programming for the new cyber context that emerged. And, one of the biggest pivots of all? Transforming traditional, in-person galas into virtual ones.
Many organizations launched their first virtual galas in 2020 with the shuttering of venues. Though initially an experiment and the only option, the digital format has turned out to be effective in building and engaging communities, as well as in raising funds. Moreover, the virtual format, at least to-date, requires less labor, time, and cost to produce. So even with the gradual reopening of nonprofit venues across the country, many nonprofits will likely continue hosting virtual or hybrid galas, in addition to in-person gatherings, this year and beyond.
This article sheds light on some virtual gala successes and presents key lessons learned for maximizing them in the post-pandemic era. Research and interviews with key players in the performing arts world including executive directors, event planners and digital marketers, professors, technology partners, and donors, have contributed to these findings.
The success of American Ballet Theatre (ABT) with its virtual galas is a case in point. Soon after the organization cancelled its spring gala celebrating its 80th anniversary, the management team launched a virtual event in May 2020. Coined ABT Together Tonight, it was a free, pre-recorded collaboration of film, music and new choreography broadcast on their YouTube channel. While ABT’s past galas had historically sold out the 3,800 seats at The Metropolitan Opera House, this first virtual event recorded over 76,000 views in just 24 hours. Encouraged, management opted for a second virtual event in November 2020 in lieu of the annual fall gala. ABT Today further expanded ABT’s global audiences, with attendees outside the U.S. representing half of 2020’s 9.8M views of total digital content.
ABT benefited financially, too. In spite of substantive losses from cancelled tours and performances, ABT’s virtual events netted a profit and contributed to an increase in its membership rolls of 500 supporters, and a gain of 3000 new donors and $100k in additional micro-donations. The laser focus on mission and community-building early on, helped ABT not only weather The Pandemic and create a long-term digital strategy, but position itself with a new revenue model for financial sustainability.
Of course, ABT has access to more resources than smaller, more budget-constrained performing arts organizations, but irrespective of size, nonprofits can achieve positive outcomes with virtual galas and a renewed, strategic approach. Here are three key considerations for planning your nonprofit’s next virtual gala, Version 2.0:
1. Adapt upcoming galas to the appropriate online format for audiences and supporters.
Successful virtual galas require an alignment of format and content with mission. Meeting audience and supporter expectations is critical. Understanding program and gala unique-ness facilitate maximum community engagement.
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club (La MaMa), a small theatre in the East Village, designed its first virtual gala, (Love Global Gala) in November 2020 for maximum community engagement. With historical roots as a global resource, incubator and platform for underrepresented artists, La MaMa treated 150 attendees to a pre-gala social hour on Zoom and a pre-recorded streaming of its gala on YouTube Live with only a $25 minimum donation. Mary Fulham, Executive Director of LaMama, smiles remembering the rapid-fire, banter in their Zoom Chat Box and live conversations in Japanese by Tokyo attendees in YouTube’s comment section. LaMama just concluded another gala, LOVE Cabaret, in June 2021. Celebrating Gay Pride, it was a hybrid event held both in-person and virtually, and incorporated live-streamed content. It was broadcast on an internally developed, open source platform. According to Fulham, access and inclusion are key LaMama values so “even audiences in a remote village with only a mobile device, can use a motorcycle generator to power up our programming.”
ABT’s mission “to preserve the classic repertoire of ballet and to extend the canon to the widest possible audience” led its management team to forego fees for their 2020 YouTube channel galas in exchange for attendees. Registrations and paywalls were avoided to minimize hurdles for pre-existing and new audiences to participate. However, an upcoming event planned for July 2021, Summer Celebration, will rely on a more sophisticated 3rd party virtual event platform, Afterparty, to deepen connections with audiences for those who will livestream the performance. It will be free to those who register with a valid email address on ABT’s website. Executive Director, Kara Barnett, is betting on constituents’ growing comfort level with digital communications, and a 3rd party platform affords ABT better metrics and more branding visibility. Professional event planners will help create a venue appropriate for ABT’s traditional summer season.
Major donors and corporate sponsors are also important constituents for any nonprofits. Choosing an appropriate online format for them is critical to success. The more sophisticated the platform, the more capabilities are available for collecting metrics valued by these constituents. However, it is challenging to cultivate and build relationships in a cyber context. For example, corporate sponsors of luxury brands, in which core customer experience is primarily in-person, may resist substituting traditional table sponsorship. It is too early to tell whether major donors will be satisfied or motivated by select-access, gatherings in a virtual-only setting.
Ultimately, the online format an organization chooses for its virtual gala depends on its size, budget and in-house skill sets, as well as the capabilities and expectations of its audience. Boxed meals, DJs, and sophisticated donation capabilities, for example, add complexity to an online event and should be incorporated gradually as nonprofits scale to more sophisticated, later-stage versions.
2. Incorporate tactical lessons from 2020 to increase attendance and fundraising in the future.
With venues slated to open in restricted formats and pandemic-era funding bound to dry up, nonprofit virtual galas must increasingly focus on fundraising and growing their audiences for future financial sustainability. Even smaller nonprofits that did not host a virtual gala in 2020, like Angel City Choral (ACC) in Los Angeles, Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) in New York and Mosaic Theater Company in Washington, D.C., will benefit from building on lessons learned from singular, virtual performances they broadcast in lieu of a virtual gala. Following are a list of tactics used by best-in-class performing arts nonprofits:
Invite previously unavailable celebrity speakers and honorees who can easily record a remark or provide a cameo to elevate the gala. The Public Theater in New York routinely accesses top-tier, alumni talent and will continue to do so, especially in an environment in which people are reluctant to travel.
Recruit previously unavailable creative talent and build innovative collaborations for productions. LaMaMa is leveraging its Cultural Ambassadors to gather content from like-minded theater companies globally. ABT is inviting Broadway producers and outside choreographers to collaborate with their dancers.
If budget permits, invest in more sophisticated online platforms and tools for an improved fundraising result. Custom graphics, colors and design elements are more available with 3rd party platforms, as are advanced donation capabilities (on-line auctions, thermometers, real-time ticker messaging, and QR codes for multiple screen events, etc.) and critical metrics for corporate sponsors and major donors.
Increase corporate sponsors and micro-donations as traditional gala table sales are replaced by other fundraising mechanisms in a virtual setting.
Provide bonus content to high-level ticket holders such as exclusive pre and post-parties, talk-backs with creatives and executives, and special programming.
Partner with others in the community to create new content, build brand awareness and ultimately, new financial support. Post the content on social media and ask artists and partners (staff, board members, corporate sponsors) to repost for exponential growth. DTH partnered with BET Television to air a YouTube video of its dancers against the backdrop of iconic NYC architecture and subways. The segment went viral. ACC partnered with famous composer, Erik Wittiker, on Zoom to create their company’s rendition of the anthem, Sogno di Volare, and to secure their continued growth on the heels of an “America’s Got Talent” win.
Offer free admission to virtual gala attendees if they RSVP prior to a certain date. In the future, consider charging nominal fees instead of free admittance. La Mama charged $25 at the low end at its latest event.
Require attendees to register to view virtual galas in order to build email lists for future engagement and fundraising. Use virtual gala registrations to build membership lists and expand newsletter circulation.
Hold the duration of your virtual gala to no more than 75 minutes to avoid attendees dropping from the event.
Make the gala available online for as long as artistic rights allow for brand and community building and follow up with attendees to encourage donations.
Recruit board members with digital, production, broadcasting and distribution expertise and networks. With board expertise in these areas, ABT is using this moment to prepare strategically for the future.
If physical space, film hardware and editing software are available, begin filming and cataloguing performances, talk-backs, educational series, etc. for future revenue potential. This will be discussed more fully in a future article in this series on digital content programing monetization.
3. Integrate crisis management processes and structures for long-term collaborative brainstorming, decision-making, and staff skill development.
Planning a successful and engaging virtual gala requires the collaboration of a dedicated team with diverse talents. Some performing arts nonprofits benefited from experimenting organizationally and realized surprising results when the pandemic, and the George Floyd murder and demands for greater diversity, equity and inclusion in the arts drove them to include more voices in the creative and operating process. With new structures and processes in place, organizations are discovering unique opportunities to improve their management and creative process for all programming.
Modeling themselves after the military, ABT instituted weekly Town Hall and “Big Idea Brainstorming” meetings in which dancers, administrators and others batted around ideas for surviving the shuttering of venues. These “war room” sessions have produced some successful experiments in virtual galas. For example, this year’s gala task force plans to test fundraising around a “throw a bouquet” donation option for attendees. By marshaling talent and resources from across its organization, ABT is co-creating events while developing staff skills. Both the development and marketing staff, for example, have become capable digital storytellers.
ABT’s team also looked to other industries for successful and applicable strategies -- they modeled themselves after the National Basketball Association’s practice, “quarantine bubbles” by creating the same for its dancers. This allowed ABT to maintain a rigorous training program for dancers during The Pandemic, keeping them fit for upcoming performances, as well as to create new works and a first-time, library archives for future broadcasting. To date, ABT has created almost a dozen bubbles in remote locations, isolating 8-20 dancers, choreographers and support staff for up to 6 weeks each time.
At The Public Theater, Associate Producer, Shante Thake, credits an early brainstorming session of her program heads for their quick pivot in operations. “Though distinct in their energies and constituents,” Thanke says, Joe’s Pub, Shakespeare in the Park, Under The Radar and their mobile unit, benefited from gathering to share core missions with one another, review needs, create calendars under different scenarios, and share competencies and strategies. Although their Vanguard gala was cancelled in February 2021, Thake believes these collaborations and The Public’s anti-racism initiatives help all programming to succeed. She points to the success of What Do We Need To Talk About, The Public’s most recent Richard Nelson play which premiered in April 2020. While in the past, each play in this series might have run for 6 weeks, gathering audiences in their 200-person theatre, this latest play incorporating content on Black Lives Matter and live streamed on YouTube, reported over 70k subscribers in just 4 days. Thake notes nonprofits and their artists are changing together l because artists are educating and advancing themselves to protect their digital careers and relevancy.
Propelled by the release in June 2020 of “We See You, White American Theatre” which demanded more equity and collaborative leadership for BIPOC in theaters nationwide, Mosaic Theater Company created a four-person, season planning team and programming matrix. Cancelling its annual gala, Mosaic opted for singular virtual events instead, leaning on its Marketing Director for filmmaking and its Production Manager for video editing. Executive Director, Serge Seiden, believes new ways of listening and working together, as well as a new organizational structure, helped Mosaic prepare for their Party on the Plaza hybrid event in May 2021. At Mosaic and others, nonprofit executives are dismantling traditional silos between artists and staff and creating hyphenated careers that afford everyone better economic opportunities in the future. From a crisis, they’re “making lemonade from lemons,” as one senior manager at ABT nicely put it.
In conclusion, as executives and independent directors of performing arts nonprofits guide their organizations towards next-level virtual events, it’s important to keep in mind that virtual galas are but one component of an overall digital strategy. An organization’s goals, internal competencies and external competitive pressures should dictate the specifics of its digital strategy, not a singular calendar event.
According to La Mama, if there’s a silver lining to 2020, which otherwise challenged every single performing arts nonprofit, it is the forced exploration of digital programming. Fulham claims “because of the constant pressure to produce and perform, LaMama never would have been able to explore digital options even though we always wanted to.” Surprisingly, they are finding themselves more digitally resilient than they believed possible.
About the Authors:
Lisa Argrette Ahmad and Jingping Zhang are strategy consultants specializing in the Arts & Culture nonprofit sector. Both are graduates of Harvard Business School (HBS) and dedicate a significant portion of their professional time to pro bono client engagements through the HBS Club of New York’s Community Partners.
Ms. Ahmad is a McKinsey & Co. alum and Founder of Second Wave Advisory, a consulting practice with expertise in re-designing strategic initiatives that embed digital expansion and programming.
Ms. Zhang is currently a Premium Propositions Lead with Spotify. She has worked with companies such as Sony Music Entertainment and CCS Fundraising.
