organizational development and strategic planning for the arts
DB&A's team of committed and experienced consultants can help you move your organization ahead in dramatic and powerful ways. DB&A works closely with prospective clients to define how its involvement can effectively address specific issues and opportunities.
development and fundraising
DB&A’s services help organizations get a greater return on their fundraising efforts. Depending on the needs of the client, our involvement can range from short-term help with a specific project to long-term strategic and production support for an institution’s development program. Some of our services include:
- development assessment: A comprehensive development assessment can help you work more efficiently and effectively. Our professionals can help you identify areas of unrealized fundraising potential, take steps to pursue those opportunities, and improve your materials, procedures, and use of staff and volunteers.
- annual fundraising: DB&A can help you make the most of your potential to attract gifts, whether through annual appeals, institutional donor programs, special events, identification and cultivation of major donors, or the design and staffing of a comprehensive fundraising program.
- capital and endowment campaigns: DB&A can help your organization manage a capital campaign –from preparatory planning through final celebration.
- development counsel: DB&A offers counsel on a contract basis to organizations seeking ongoing development advice and guidance to complement in-house capabilities.
- temporary staffing: DB&A provides temporary development staffing for clients while a search is underway, to cover times of peak activity, or to fill unexpected vacancies.
strategic planning
Planning is essential for realizing any organization's potential – in both its day-to-day operation and its possibilities for growth. The planning process also renews staff, trustee, and donor commitment to the organization's goals and mission, and it offers valuable opportunities to build relationships with prospective supporters.
DB&A offers planning services ranging from facilitation of day-long planning retreats to helping design and manage comprehensive long-range planning processes over a period of months.
executive coaching in organizational development
Individual members of DB&A's team of experienced consultants are available to work one-on-one with executive and development directors helping them build more effective leadership skills and generate greater success for their organizations. Monthly organizational development coaching sessions are a cost effective means of substantially increasing an organization's ovearall effectiveness.
meeting facilitation
Well-planned and well-executed meetings can create new understandings, resolve tensions, determine courses of action, and arouse the loyalty and enthusiasm of participants. DB&A’s experienced staff can ensure the success of pivotal meetings by:
Helping determine appropriate agendas, processes and goals Gathering, synthesizing and presenting relevant information Eliciting broad participation Providing an informed and disinterested perspective Facilitating discussion and decision-making
training
DB&A's training workshops, seminars and retreats have helped thousands of artists, administrators and board members gain new insights into fundraising, development, and organizational growth. Presentations range from hour-long workshops to day-long retreats.
research and cultural policy
DB&A helps national service organizations and policy-makers understand and respond to circumstances and trends affecting the non-profit cultural sector. Recent projects have included research on the challenges faced by independent artists and small companies, the emergence of new models of patronage, and the interplay among the arts, funders, and politics.
Our unique perspective on such issues combines field-wide thinking with an understanding of workaday realities – an outlook informed by our Associates’ professional backgrounds as arts administrators, practicing artists and academics.
