Become a Master Gardener of Audience Cultivation

Why pollinating Gen X today will yield greater, more resilient organizations tomorrow.

by Jim DeGood, Director of Client Services |TRG Arts

The arts and culture field has been aware of the potential for the Millennial generation, due to its sheer size, to offset anticipated losses brought about by the decline in participation by Silents and Boomers.

The size of the Millennial generation has created a unique focus on developing this younger new audience cohort, to the exclusion of the smaller Generation X. Your audience cultivation plans should not select one generation over another. It’s not “Millennials over Generation X.” Your strategy must include cultivating relationships with both. And, Generation X is where your attention needs to be to reap immediate rewards.

Right now, Generation X is in the prime of career building. They are earning more than other previous generations at the same age. Disposable incomes are reaching their highest levels, and with older children in the household and well-established careers, disposable time is increasing. TRG’s national data set reveals the optimal median age of 44 for cultivating repeat arts and culture participation. Generation X is squarely at the center of the audience-building target today and is showing early signs of deepening loyalty. Since 2015:

• Donation rates for Generation X grew 27%. This is compared to a 2% loss in Boomers and 27% loss in Silents.

• Subscription participation increased for Generation X by 10% while it decreased for Silents by 10% and Boomers saw a modest growth of 1%.

• Single ticket buying was down across nearly all generational cohorts. However, Generation X participation decreased by only 8% as compared to 12% for Boomers and 22% for Silents.

The power of cultivating deeper relationships with the most likely generational cohort cannot be understated. Think of it this way:

• A 1.5% increase in holistic participation by Generation X offsets a 1% reduction in participation by Silents.

• Millennials take twice as long to convert to subscription and donation behaviors than Generation X.

• Without increased participation, it takes 2.5 Millennials for every one Generation Xer to contribute the same revenue to an organization’s bottom line.

Given this final point, the truth is: we must not neglect developing the participation of Generation X. While there are 7 million more Millennials than Gen Xers, the latter generation is poised to contribute significantly to an organization’s bottom line immediately without the additional cultivation steps required by Millennials.

What can you do as a leader to focus your audience development plan to ensure mid-term sustainability and long-term diversification and growth?

Paint a picture of your business as it is today. Help others see the dramatic need for a different orientation.

• Determine the proportionality of your patron base by generation.

• Work with board and artistic leaders to determine the desired composition of your future audience. Compare your organization’s proportions today to your desired composition and the marketplace you serve. Take care in defining the market and narrow your comparison to the field of “likely buyers” rather than the entire population.

• Calculate how much patron- generated revenue is contributed by each generational cohort. How much growth within each cohort would your organization need to realize to offset revenue losses if all silent revenue evaporated? To replace Boomer revenue?

Take stock of the assets available to leverage today. Plan to acquire additional resources required for change.

• Is your programming reflective of the need to cultivate Generation X? Millennials? Is there multi-year commitment to ensuring a return path for these cohorts to enable long-term relationship development?

• Is your front-of-house operation reflective of experiences that resonate and inspire loyalty from Gen X and Millennials?

• Are your marketing campaigns adaptive to the value propositions uniquely appreciated by Gen X?

• Is your educational programming designed to allow Millennial adults to participate with their children, and is it curated in such a way that encourages Millennial parents to return without their children?

Relentlessly measure. Continually adapt. Tirelessly communicate progress.

• Our staff teams easily fall into old, familiar rhythms of work; these rhythms are more related to the production or exhibition cycle. Create mechanisms for measurement that transcend these typical cycles and require continual evaluation and discussion.

• Frame progress both through growth in households but also change in average spend by household. This will ensure you have programs that balance cultivation of new audiences while also deepening relationships with the audiences you have today.

• Adapt plans based on your findings. This requires continual measurement and for you to hold your staff teams accountable to not “copying and pasting” the previous program plan for use in the next.

• Staff teams and board members must be reminded of the importance of this work and hear regular progress reports. Every staff meeting. Every board meeting.

In the arts, audience development plans are often thought of as resilient and self-sustaining as our natural environmental ecosystem. With minimal care and attention, we trust that the audiences we invite to a performance or exhibition today will have such an enjoyable experience they will over time naturally move into multi-attendance, subscription, and finally find their way into the contributed giving program.

The arts are not as self-resilient as nature. Leaders must be more like master gardeners of audience cultivation; thoughtfully introduce specific plan varietals, cross-planing to encourage crossdevelopment, and always curating the “garden” we want to tend.