Earlier this year, we gathered marketing leaders from top cultural institutions in New York City to talk about conflict. It comes as no surprise that on the way to delivering on the mission, there can be disagreements, clashes, and maybe all-out battles. We set out to create a brave space to have this conversation and brought in an expert to show us the way.

As arts marketers, we’re always working to deliver the best experiences. Creating the perfect message and reaching out to interested followers at just the right time is our mission. But you could be missing out on connecting with a large segment of your fans by not optimizing your emails for accessibility.

As a hearing person in the Deaf world, I can’t begin to understand and represent that experience, but what I can do is advocate, assist, help, and be an ally. In the world of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, as a disabled person, I can understand and represent that experience as well as be an ally.

Many of us in the arts administration world have experienced ticket sales panic when it comes to new or unusual works. How do we get people to take a chance on something they’ve never heard of, when we’re literally scientifically conditioned to resist change?

So often, as marketers and communicators, we are focused on the immediate future of our organization and can’t get the perspective we need to see the bigger story that we are not telling, the one that informs every aspect of the arts ecosystem: how the broader public views the arts.

What if nonprofit organizations considered their funders as customers in the classical business sense—with problems that needed solving? How would they relate to them then? Would it not change interactions, communications, and messaging?