8 Negotiation Strategies to Advance in Arts Leadership

If your days as an arts leader are consumed by never-ending to-do lists, last-minute fires, and reactive work—this episode is your call to break the cycle. In this Season 5 finale, we dig into a leadership struggle that nearly every arts executive, administrator, and manager faces: the battle between the urgent and the important. Through honest reflection, personal experience, and practical tools, we unpack why time management in arts leadership isn’t just about productivity—it’s about reclaiming your role as a strategic visionary. You’ll learn how to identify the 20% of your work that drives real impact, why busyness can be a form of avoidance, and how to shift your focus toward building a thriving future for your organization. If you're ready to trade burnout for clarity and momentum, this episode offers both the mindset shift and tactical tools to help you get there.The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

One of the biggest mistakes arts organizations make is over relying on major donors. In this penultimate episode of the season, Aubrey Bergauer talks with Dana Snyder—author of The Monthly Giving Mastermind—about why major gifts alone won’t save your organization’s financial future. Together, they explore how a strong monthly giving program isn’t just smart strategy; it’s sustainable, reliable, and rooted in digital marketing best practices.Learn how moving just 2% more charitable donations to monthly giving could unlock $9 billion in recurring revenue. Discover why recurring donors give 42% more per year, and how to build a donor pipeline that leads to more major gifts—not fewer. If you’re tired of chasing one-time checks and ready to grow real stability, this episode is a must-listen.What You’ll Learn:Why over-relying on major donors puts your organization at riskThe $9 billion opportunity in recurring givingHow to launch and grow a thriving monthly giving programWhy digital marketing skills are key to donor retentionHow to move monthly donors into major givingThe Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

Does managing operations at your arts organization feel tedious or unwieldy? Maybe you know your internal processes need a boost, but don’t you know where to begin. Good news: It’s actually more simple than you think. This episode, Aubrey talks about the Kaizen Method of sustained, incremental change. If it feels like you’re trying to turn a big ship, instead of letting perfect be the enemy of good, start by testing out small changes to see what yields the biggest results. This episode tells you how. The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

For arts organizations, the vast majority of your audience is not subscribers and donors; over 90% of your patrons are the ones who come and go, never to engage with another performance again. How can arts administrators capture that large segment of their audience base and stop the churn? Redesign the user experience. This episode, Aubrey talks with UX and product designer, Linda Hsieh Logston. She shares five steps to applying UX design to arts management. The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

Women in arts administration make up over half of the workforce. Yet arts leadership roles — on stage and off — are still male dominated. This episode, Aubrey shares some shocking statistics from the field and explains why this paradox is so common in arts organizations (Hint: it's not just about getting more women in the C-suite; the problem starts earlier than you might think). And most important, how arts administrators can change their systems to address gender bias in their own institutions. The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

Marketing has changed so much for arts administrators in recent years that you might not know how to maximize your marketing budget these days. What percentage should you allocate? What marketing channels are the most effective this year? How much should you spend? This episode, Aubrey explains how to think strategically about reaching the audience you want—and how to budget for it. The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

Understanding patron data can be daunting, confusing, or even cringeworthy for arts administrators. But your data is an asset, and arts organizations are leaving thousands of dollars on the table when you don’t fully harness it. The good news is understanding and utilizing your data is not hard when done right. It’s all about creating systems to make your data work for you. This episode, Aubrey talks with arts administrator and Changing the Narrative Program Director Stephanie Stallings about working smarter not harder, so you can use data to track and grow your patron retention. The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

For arts administrators, donor development often means soliciting as many patrons as possible, as soon as possible, without accounting for their unique needs. This may glean some revenue in the short term, but what about next season? Someone coming to a show once to check it off their bucket list is not the same as the season subscriber or donor who’s bought-in because they have a tried and true relationship with your organization. This episode, Aubrey talks about how tailoring your messaging to build audience relationships is the fruitful key that transforms first-time patrons into loyal donors. The Offstage Mic is made possible by Artelize: their Audience Retention Dashboard is the one-stop place to access your audience data across every important metric. And also by Annual Fund Toolkit: they’ve built a support system to help grow your donor community and major gift pipeline.

Advancing in arts leadership can be tricky, because what got you to where you are now likely won’t get you to where you want to be. In the final part of this bonus series, Aubrey gives you real-world examples of the seven researched-backed steps to advancing your career in arts management. Then, she guides you through a visioning exercise to identify the conditions and behaviors needed to become the arts leader you want to be.  

Imagine negotiating the salary and benefits you know you deserve as an arts leader. Or going to the bargaining table for union negotiations, and all parties come out satisfied. In Part 2 of this bonus series, Aubrey dives deep into an important skill necessary to growing your leadership: the art of negotiation. Spoiler alert: it’s not all about the money. Then she builds upon the visioning in Part 1, helping you understand the difference between the work you’re good at vs. the work that will let your true genius shine.