Member Login
Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Marketing Spend and Return on Investments

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored marketing spend and return on investments across different marketing campaigns and strategies.

Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
Earned Revenue Sources- F&B and Rentals

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored earned revenue sources outside of ticket sales, with a special focus on food and beverage services and rental opportunities.

Executive Benchmark
ABA Research Team
AI & Digital Usage

Our latest ABA Executive Benchmark explored the Digital and AI usage in the arts and cultural sectors.

Signature Study
ABA Research Team
The Compelling Employer: Attracting and ...

This season ABA is launching The Compelling Employer, a groundbreaking research initiative examining the employment preferences of arts and culture employees across genres and geographies. This work will build on ABA’s 2022 work on The Compelling Offer. The pandemic may be behind us, but staff acquisition and retention remain core industry-wide concerns. ABA is revisiting this initiative to understand how staff preferences have changed and what organizations can do to attract and retain high performers.

Our Compelling Employer survey uses conjoint analysis (also known as trade-off analysis) to give arts and culture leaders a much clearer picture of what employees want in a job, and what they are willing to trade off to get it. This newly updated survey will seek to understand what staff value in their managers, pay structures, culture and office environments. In addition, we will profile best practices in improving manager quality, shifting to pay for performance, and cultivating culture change from both inside and outside the arts and culture industry.

The Compelling Employer: Attracting and Retaining Arts and Culture Professionals
Signature Study
ABA Research Team
Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing ...

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.

Driving Attendance Post Pandemic: Marketing Practices that Accelerate Audience Growth

Flexible Work Policies

Arts organizations are increasingly offering flexible work policies to staff, but some jobs are only able to be done in the office. Our latest Arts Executive Poll asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on how they are implementing digital strategies moving forward and their priorities for digital programming, monetization targets, resources, equity of flex policies, and new technologies.

Digital Usage, Monetization, and NFTs

Digital strategies, especially related to monetization of digital content, vary significantly across organizations. Our latest Arts Executive Poll asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on how they are implementing digital strategies moving forward and their priorities for digital programming, monetization targets, resources, and new technologies.

Post-COVID Financial Recovery

In the wake of the recent Ransomware attack on the digital marketing tool WordFly, decisions around technology have never been more important for the secure running of arts and cultural organizations. Our latest Arts Leader Survey asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on the different platforms they use across different activities, recent changes in vendors, and the features they are most satisfied with when evaluating CRM platforms.

The Latest COVID-19 Policies

As indoor mask mandates and vaccine requirements continue to be lifted across the globe as governments prepare for the next phase of living with COVID-19 arts organizations are wondering how these changes will impact in-person visitor and staff returns. Our latest Arts Executive Poll asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on COVID-19 policies for administrative staff, audiences/visitors, and artists, as well as other implemented safety measures.

Board Governance

In the last 18-months arts organizations have faced extreme challenges from the global health crisis to social and racial reckoning. Constituents have demanded change and accountability at all levels of the arts organization, especially in governing boards. Our latest Arts Executive Poll asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on the state of board policies and structures, recruitment priorities, and other initiatives to diversify governing boards.

Community Engagement

Community engagement, equity, and inclusion featured highly among arts leaders’ top priorities according to our 2022 Hot Topics survey, as arts organizations place increasing importance on relevance in their communities. Our latest Arts Executive Poll asked arts leaders to benchmark themselves on how they execute programs that engage diverse constituents in their communities.