This workbook series focuses on one of the many ways arts organizations can work with businesses: skills-based volunteering. The Business Volunteers for the Arts® (BVA) program, a pro bono consulting program, operates in several cities around the United States. The program is overseen nationally by Americans for the Arts.

This workbook series focuses on one of the many ways arts organizations can work with businesses—arts-based employee engagement. This broad concept can be defined as employee engagement training or a cultural experience, delivered through various arts disciplines (music, visual art, drama etc.).

Arts partnerships offer companies effective and cost-efficient methods of achieving critical business goals. In fact, 79% of businesses agree that the arts increases name recognition, and 74% of businesses say the arts offer networking opportunities to developing businesses (2010 BCA National Survey of Business Support for the Arts). The fourth essay in The pARTnership Movement essay series, Engage Your Employees, shares stories of how some of America’s top companies partner with the arts to build morale, creativity, and innovation in the workplace.

Building business and arts partnerships is a two-way street. This tool-kit outlines the 8 Best Reasons for Businesses and the Arts to Partner, and provides case-making ideas to share with businesses. The toolkit outlines how partnering with the arts can address business challenges around employee engagement, marketing and brand share, and advancing corporate objectives related to social and community impact. This is a “how-to” primer with ideas, strategies, and research references to help you begin to establish local partnerships and explain the benefits of partnering with your...

Businesses often promote volunteerism as one of the key elements of employee engagement. Arts organizations are looking for ways to increase involvement with skilled volunteers. This tool-kit focuses on how volunteer programs can make employees feel more engaged on the job, learn new skills or improve their existing skills, and increase interaction between junior and senior employees, and how we can bring this information into conversations with corporate partners about designing Business Volunteers for the Arts® programs.

Even in the current economy, businesses are still searching for innovative ways to recruit and retain employees. Programs that allow employees to bring their values to work are good investments. The arts are a wonderful catalyst that can help shift perceptions, embrace diversity, build team spirit, foster creative thinking and improve communication. This tool-kit will provide information on how and why the arts help engage employees.