Taking Intrinsic Impact to the Next Level

This morning, in You've Cott Mail (which if you aren't subscribed to, you should be!), Thomas Cott highlighted an article from the Guardian UK about some work being done there on measuring the emotional response of audiences to theatre. What was so interesting about the article is that it mirrors some major research we’re about to launch here at Theatre Bay Area and in six cities across the US.

The article is a summary of a new effort in the UK to measure the emotional response of audiences to art. Working with WolfBrown, the research firm that piloted a lot of this intrinsic impact research (as it’s called), we’ll be building a similar survey and doing follow-up research with 25 theatre companies in six cities (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, New York, and Charleston). Throughout the 2010/2011 season, we, with arts service organization partners in each city (LA Stage Alliance, Theatre Puget Sound, ART/New York, League of Chicago Theatres, League of Charleston Theatres), will be working with the theatre companies to set intrinsic impact goals for three productions in a season, measure the effect of each of those productions using the survey, and then generate a final report for each company and work through, with the artistic, administrative and marketing staff, the implications of the research and how it matches (or doesn’t match) the company's hoped-for goals.

In addition, as part of this work, we’ll be developing a web-based interface that we hope will eventually allow any theatre across the country access to an affordable, fee-for-service program in intrinsic impact. Companies will be able to produce the survey themselves, learn how to set goals for the various axes of intrinsic impact, and then log the results themselves and see how they stack up. They’ll be able to develop a portfolio of their impact on their audiences, with a lot of possible implications as more companies participate. Over time, by making this an affordable service [which it currently decidedly is not – this research project, with projected generous funding from three national foundations and assorted local foundations (more news on that once the contracts are signed), will have a total budget upwards of $400,000], we hope to provide companies with a new way of measuring the effectiveness of their work on audiences. In addition, we hope these measurements eventually will become an alternative way of demonstrating worth to funders, audiences and trustees.

Our work will begin over the summer as staff from Theatre Bay Area and WolfBrown begin traveling to the partner cities, identifying theatre companies with the partner ASOs, and beginning the induction process. We’re incredibly excited about this new work – especially now that we see that there’s a parallel effort going on in the UK. We expect to be able to report out on this, at least preliminary results, in time for our Annual Conference next spring, and plan on doing final reporting on the project at TCG and NAMP in 2011.

P.S. As some of you know, we did a pilot of this project a few years ago around Free Night. The results of that pilot are available here. It’s the report called "Assessing the Intrinsic Impact of the Bay Area Free Night of Theater Program."

Why Writing for the Head Is "All Wrong"

Frank Dickerson, a fundraiser and researcher, recently published an article whose title gives away his thesis: "The Way We Write is All Wrong." His piece, which is specifically about fundraising language for American nonprofits, linguistically analyzed 1.5 million words from 2,412 online and direct-mail fundraising documents using a series of computer programs developed by a linguist named Douglas Biber.

The article is interesting and is written, deliberately, in the easily accessible, anecdote-filled tone that Dickerson recommends fundraisers use--which has the side benefit of being quick and easy to read. Essentially, Dickerson's analysis reveals that the vast majority of the fundraising pieces he looked at have a tone and format linguistically consistent with dry, scholarly writing; fundraising discourse "failed to connect with and involve readers on a personal and emotional level" and "failed to tell stories about real people whom readers might actually care about."

The most interesting part of the paper, for me, was his hypothesis on why nonprofit fundraisers fall back on overly written, overly edited, dry asks that rely on statistics, measurable outcomes, etc. Dickerson argues that development professionals in the nonprofit world are super educated, with advanced degrees, etc., and that being brought up in that style of scholarly writing affects their ability to write. In his words:

"They write as if they were still graduate students. They continue to produce a style of discourse appropriate to a past-bound setting, dedicated to a past-bound task, created for a past-bound audience…In contrast, [fundraisers should] follow writing rules or laws of composition that enable discourse to achieve pre-determined rhetorical aims…[like] interpersonal involvement and narrative discourse."
(Italics his…all of them.)

After taking a short side trip into the neurological underpinnings of his argument, which is interesting but sort of out of left field, Dickerson does provide some examples from the 2,412 pieces he analyzed that scored really well on his Biber scales. One is a letter from the Catholic charity Covenant House that tells a story about giving a meal to a young hooker on the street. The other is a rather gripping tale from a Jewish charity that helps forgotten Holocaust heroes. In both cases, what really got me is that Dickerson is advocating the type of storytelling that I often reel from--I find it manipulative and frustrating. At the same time, it's not terribly surprising that direct-mail pieces that appeal to the emotional, empathic part of a person's brain do better in asking them to support a cause.

We in the arts may have a shorter way to go to get to that type of fundraising writing, since we traffic first and foremost in an ethereal product that itself appeals to the emotional, emphatic part of the brain.