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Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Board Governance 2026

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored overall board governance and operations- including board sizes, terms, minimum giving requirements and overall performance.

Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Artificial Intelligence Usage & Outlook

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored artificial intelligence usage and outlook in the arts and cultural sectors.

Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
2025 Ticket and Subscriptions Sales and 2026 ...

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored single ticket sales and subscription revenues for 2025 with projections for 2026.

Signature Study
ABA Research Team
Experience Economy

Amid accelerating consumer demand for experiences, ABA’s research explores the behavioral and technological forces reshaping the experience economy and offers a practical framework to help arts organizations create compelling, future-ready experiences.

Experience Economy
Signature Study
ABA Research Team
Strategies to Strengthen Major Giving

In response to the decline in public funding for arts and culture worldwide and the accompanying increase in private fundraising efforts, ABA conducted a Major Research study to understand new approaches and best practices towards strengthening major giving efforts and deepening major donor relationships. 

Our study reveals insights and strategies around team optimization, board engagement, data-driven prospecting, impact-led conversations, and donor cultivation events to help development leaders attract new donors and enhance relationships with existing ones.  

Whether it’s planned giving, international tours or impact reporting, this research will help your organization build out a major giving strategy that brings in committed donors for the long-term.


Strategies to Strengthen Major Giving

Signature Study Archive

Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing Practices that Accelerate Audience Growth

Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing Practices that Accelerate Audience Growth

In our post-pandemic arts world, many arts organizations are discovering that most of the patrons that are going to come back have come back already. Even organizations with healthy audiences right now are facing challenging budgeting environments, so the need to build a new base of customers and to increase attendance by casual audiences and visitors is acute.

ABA is deploying a survey of marketing resource deployment, activities and other behaviors in order to assess quantitatively the marketing drivers behind healthy attendance.

The Compelling Employment Offer: Understanding What Really Matters to Arts Professionals

The Compelling Employment Offer: Understanding What Really Matters to Arts Professionals

At a time when the labor market is heating up, arts organizations must find ways to resonate better with the needs and expectations of employees in order to build employment offers capable of competing in a tight labor market.

The Advisory Board for the Arts used conjoint analysis (also known as trade-off analysis) in order to give arts leaders a much clearer picture of what employees want, and what they are willing to trade off in order to get it.

Coming Back Stronger: Using the Shutdown to Rebuild Audience Loyalty

Coming Back Stronger: Using the Shutdown to Rebuild Audience Loyalty

As we emerge from the pandemic, a primary concern for arts organizations of all genres is how to bring audiences back in a robust way - as soon and as safely as possible.

ABA’s Coming Back Stronger signature research initiative looked at audience motivations to attend arts performances and what we can do to secure their loyalty during the shutdown.

Key Success Factors for Recovery

Key Success Factors for Recovery

The Key Success Factors for Recovery initiative focused on how arts organizations can overcome challenges of the COVID-19 crisis and shutdown. To present the findings, ABA held a series of virtual meetings with member organizations.

Content addressed how to improve the resilience of recovery plans, assessing audience preferences for digital experiences, building digital strategies with enduring value, and creating meaningful experiences in digital.