Jackie Huffman, Interaction Designer, Blackbaud, Inc.
Nicholai Burton, Senior Product Support Lead, Blackbaud, Inc.
Kevin Russell, Senior Consultant, Blackbaud, Inc.
Steven Roth, President, The Pricing Institute

Especially in today’s climate, arts and cultural organizations are faced with two major challenges — 1: bringing in more earned income, and 2: reducing costs. Effective pricing and discounting strategies can assist organizations in achieving these goals. This session will be a panel presentation covering how to create and implement effective pricing, promotion, and discounting strategies. The session will begin by highlighting some important considerations when defining your goals and strategies including revenue management, patron relationship management, and avoiding “panic mode” in a challenging economic situation. Next, the panelist will share case studies from different arts and cultural organizations. The session will end with implementation strategies and time for Q & A.

Kevin Russell, Senior Consultant, Blackbaud, Inc.
Margo Anderson, Internet Solutions Manager, Blackbaud, Inc.

Join Kevin Russell, senior consultant, and Margo Anderson, Internet solutions manager, as they discuss their experiences in working with and delivering eCommerce solutions in the arts and cultural space. Some areas of focus will be: how the speakers work to find a common ground when working with many different interests at an organization, strategies in practice at other organizations, and how to avoid pitfalls of biting off too much at one time.

Michael Culler, Managing Consultant, Blackbaud, Inc.

Join our panelists as they review how to best work across departments with respect to sharing data and how to gain buy-in from the top down and to the bottom up.

Jim Hackney, Consultant, Alexander Haas

If you work for a performing arts center, museum, theatre, or ballet company, converting your ticket-buyers/members into donors is one of the most important challenges you face. How do you get a gift after you have sold the ticket? How can you turn a member into a major donor? How do you determine if patrons and donors are ready to become campaign donors? Understanding where gifts come from, the importance of cultivation, and how to complete the process are keys to success. Giving USA figures from this year will be presented as well as a discussion on giving in a down economy.

Alison Fultz, Senior Solutions Engineer, Blackbaud, Inc.
Brian R. Lauterbach, Vice President and Lead Consultant, RuffaloCODY

The environment in which we raise money has forever changed. If your annual fund continues to rely on the implementation of tactics — email, direct mail, and phone calls — without an additive and adapted strategy, your creative energy and experience will be spent designing explanations for results instead of constructing sustainable solutions. For example, does your planning discussion include the best day between Thanksgiving and December 20 to send a year-end an appeal? Do you find yourself asking, “Should we be purchasing lists?” or “Should we hire a (better) telemarketing firm?” Does your online campaign consist of copying and pasting your mailed solicitations into an email with a great masthead? If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, you need to build-out your construct of one of the most critical elements of fundraising: the annual fund. This session will explore provocative ideas and examples to challenge the traditional approach to the annual fund. The objective: to give you data, real-time case studies, and analytical tools to further develop or challenge your existing campaign design and implementation — by re-examining and reallocating your existing tools, not investing in new ones.

Kit Matthew, Product Manager, Blackbaud, Inc.
Jill Koski, Vice President of Development, The Morton Arboretum

This session will offer best practices on how to build loyalty by understanding your constituents across all of your organization’s touch points. We will explore learnings and techniques from the museum, academic, hospitality, and entertainment industries to help you achieve more members, greater retention, and more repeat visitors by focusing on the benefits to a loyalty program, the must-haves for a successful loyalty program, and what should be continually tracked and measured in a loyalty program.

Michael Culler, Managing Consultant, Blackbaud, Inc.
Alison Fultz, Senior Solutions Engineer, Blackbaud, Inc.
Amie Highum, Solutions Engineer, Blackbaud, Inc.
Nicholai Burton, Senior Product Support Lead, Blackbaud, Inc.
Rosita Bradham, Principal Consultant, Blackbaud, Inc.

Are you a new Patron Edge or Patron Edge Online user or do you just want to brush up on your techniques? Check out this session, which will walk you through the steps of troubleshooting and overcoming the most recent and frequent problems reported to the Patron Edge support team. You’ll get tips and tricks you can start using immediately to overcome challenges related to processing tickets, printing tickets, SQL Server®, and more. In addition, you'll get best practice ideas directly from our arts and cultural consultants.

Kevin Russell, Senior Consultant, Blackbaud, Inc.
Kit Matthew, Product Manager, Blackbaud, Inc.
Margo Anderson, Internet Solutions Manager, Blackbaud, Inc.
Nicholai Burton, Senior Product Support Lead, Blackbaud, Inc.
Jeff Heffner, Product Support Lead, Blackbaud, Inc.
Rosita Bradham, Principal Consultant, Blackbaud, Inc.

Narrowing the great divide between visitor services and development, we will examine the communications between the development staff and the box office staff and the ways in which box office staff members can partner with development in the stewarding of donors and guests while maintaining efficiency in moving guests through the box office. Up-selling is not a dirty word; we will focus on how to encourage front-line staff to do more to engage the guest during the short window of opportunity, thereby tying the front office staff to the continued success of the organization. We’ll have small group breakouts around these issues, and you can learn from your peers about what is working and what their challenges are.

Margo Anderson, Internet Solutions Manager, Blackbaud, Inc.

Your website should provide a warm, personalized, interactive online experience that attracts members and maximizes fundraising efforts through social media, online communities, and personal pages. Look for inspiration on this tour of arts and cultural websites using Blackbaud® NetCommunity™. We will highlight website best practices.