2025 Delaware Arts Summit Workshops
Strategic Budgeting and Scenario Planning
Presented by Kristine Alvarez, Senior Director, Nonprofit Finance Fund
To effectively plan for the future, nonprofit leaders must imagine possible scenarios and determine how their organizations would respond. This workshop will walk leaders through the process for integrating scenario planning into their organization’s operating budget, helping their team and board to understand budget implications for various “what-ifs” and create plans of action. NFF will help participants quantify the unknown, develop budget scenarios for possible future crises, identify key drivers of change, assess revenue and expense variability, and prepare for both best- and worst-case scenarios.
This training series aims to (1) provide leaders with a common understanding about what scenario planning is and isn’t, and how it can connect to the annual budget process (2) identify approaches for mitigating risk in the budget process; (3) walk through the steps of developing a scenario plan.
Strategies for Impact and Evaluation – Two Parts
Presented by Susannah Laramee Kidd, PhD, Independent Consultant
Part 1: Getting in Touch with Your “Why”: Articulating Arts Impact: Part One
Getting in touch with the “why” of the work you are doing can help you get clear on what’s important about your efforts and what impacts it might have. In this workshop you will learn the difference between outputs and outcomes, explore arts impact frameworks, and become acquainted with logic models and theories of change. Then, you will craft an impact statement about why you are doing your work and what you hope to achieve through it that you can use as the foundation of your evaluation, grant writing, or storytelling efforts.
Part 2: Are You Achieving Your “Why?”: Evaluating Your Impact: Part Two
Once you are clear on your “why” and the impacts you hope to achieve, evaluation is the process of learning from your work and understanding whether your efforts are successful. This workshop is an introduction to the evaluation process, including crafting an evaluation question based on your why, identifying stakeholders, selecting the right evidence, and communicating your impact. Participants will draft an evaluation plan based on their impact statements from part one, so this workshop builds on the morning’s workshop, but part two can also be taken on its own.
Culture as Capital: The Multigenerational Investment That Pays Dividends
Keri Mesropov, Founder, Spring Talent
Culture isn’t just a vibe, it’s an asset. A strong, intentional culture fuels retention, engagement and ultimately, the bottom line. But in arts organizations, where resources are constantly constrained and artistic influences create unique pressures, culture can either be your greatest strength or your biggest challenge. Add to that a multigenerational workforce, each bringing distinct values, expectations and unique ways of working, plus a world of work that is changing rapidly, and the need for culture to be both purposeful and adaptive becomes clear.
In this interactive session, we’ll explore:
- What culture really is and why it’s more than just a mission statement
- The tie between values and culture and how alignment creates sustainability
- The unique impact each of the four generations working today bring to the formation of a company culture
- How to actively shape culture, with practical tools you can take home and apply
Attendees will develop strategies to strengthen your organization’s culture through:
- Onboarding and recognition programs that engage all generations
- The discovery of your institution’s origins and how these contour and color its current day culture
- Embedding values into daily operations
- Norms and rituals that reinforce understanding and embodiment of culture
Building a Digital Marketing Strategy: Essentials for Growth, Structure and Authenticity – Two Parts
Francesca Olsen, Writer and Consultant
Being an artist or arts/culture practitioner is already a lot of work, and the pressure of marketing that work can often feel like a huge lift. How can we honor our work and balance promotion with practice? What’s important to focus on in a world where our time and capacity is limited?
In Session 1, we’ll get to the heart of these questions and explore the basics of branding, building a marketing strategy, and using social media platforms and other digital communications tools to promote artistic individuals, partnerships, and organizations. We’ll cover digital marketing best practices around audience building, effective social media, SEO optimization, and websites.
In Session 2, participants will begin building a comprehensive social media strategy based on a supplied template. We’ll also open discussion and workshop solutions to individual marketing questions, brainstorming content creation ideas and more, aiming for everyone to walk away with actionable steps to improve and grow their digital footprints.
Cross-Sector Strategies at the Intersection of Arts and Health
Ryan Stubbs, Chief Program and Strategy Officer, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
Capt. Moira McGuire, Founder, The National Initiative for Arts & Health Across the Military
State arts agencies continue to grow and develop initiatives to leverage the positive impact of the arts on health. They form strategic partnerships with health-sector agencies and nonprofit organizations to strengthen social connections, build resilience, aid in healing from trauma, and extend the benefits of the arts to all residents. Based on lessons learned from NASAA’s cross-sector research and Arts and Health Professional Learning Community, this workshop will highlight state level arts and health partnerships, opportunities, and case studies to help participants think through strategies relevant to their organizations and communities.
Cross-Sector Strategies at the Intersection of Arts and Health Presentation