What Drives Effectiveness in Generating Earned Relational Revenue?

Subscription and Membership Earned Revenue

What organizational characteristics affect this performance?

• Earned revenue from subscriptions and memberships varies by sector and effectiveness in generating it increases with organizational age and budget size. Organizations that primarily serve children also tend to generate higher levels of earned relational revenue.
• When organizations have a higher number of programmatic offerings, present higher numbers of national and world premieres, or target Asian-Americans, African-Americans, or Hispanics/Latinos, earned revenue from subscribers and members tends to be more difficult to generate.

How do community arts and leisure characteristics affect performance?

• Effective generation of earned relational revenue tends to be lower for organizations in communities with higher levels of total arts dollar activity or total number of arts providers.
• Having more organizations that compete in the Arts Education, Community-based, Dance, or Music sectors tends to raise the earned relational revenue tide for all organizations in these sectors in a market. The reverse is true for Theatre companies.

How do socio-demographic characteristics of the community affect performance?

• The ability to generate earned relational revenue increases for organizations in communities where total population is higher, median income is higher, and the socioeconomic level is higher.
• Earned relational revenue from subscriptions and memberships tends to be more difficult to effectively generate for organizations that primarily serve African Americans.

What impact does cultural policy have on performance?

Government grant activity in the market has an inverse relationship with generation of earned revenue from subscribers and members.

What Drives Efficiency in Managing Total Expenses (less deprecation)?

What organizational characteristics affect this performance?

• Total expense efficiency varies with sector. The older the organization, the more efficient it becomes in managing total expenses. The same tends to be true for organizations that have a parent organization, and for those that primarily serve African Americans or children.
• Organizations that primarily serve young adults or Hispanics/Latinos tend to have less efficiency in containing total annual expenses.

How do community arts and leisure characteristics affect performance?

• Expenses tend to be more efficiently managed by organizations in communities with more artists and arts providers and less so for those in markets with higher levels of total arts dollar activity.
• Specifically, having more organizations in the Arts Education, Community-based, Dance, Opera, Other Museums, Theatre, and General Performing Arts sectors in a community tends to restrain total expenses for all organizations in these sectors in the market. The increased level of head-to-head competition pushes organizations to be more efficient.

How do socio-demographic characteristics of the community affect performance?

• Expenses tend to be more tightly managed by organizations in communities with stronger socioeconomic characteristics.
• The higher the median age in the community, the greater the tendency for organizations to be less efficient in managing expenses.

What impact does public funding have on performance?

• Where there is higher overall state and federal grant activity in the local marketplace, organizations tend to have greater efficiency in managing total expenses.