I’m the Artistic Director (AD) of three volunteer and one professional choral ensembles. Though they share the same AD they vary in size from 15 to 110 members, with annual budgets ranging from ~$25,000 to ~$275,000, and are led in remarkably different ways.
Sitting at roundtable discussions at Chorus America, amidst fellow conductors, staff, and board members, all of who want the best for their ensembles, always proves interesting. Similar questions invariably arise: “Should my organization fundraise enough money to add an executive director (substitute: marketing manager, development director, etc)?” “Should we aim to have a ‘working’ board that excels in all matters tactical, or an ‘advisory’ board that devotes itself to big picture strategic concerns?” “Should the individuals overseeing ensemble operations be professional or volunteer?” “My organization is basically just me and the president—is that bad?”
Amidst those discussions, I’ve been able to offer my own experiences working with a variety of leadership schemes among my three volunteer choral ensembles. I’ll focus on the two most illuminatingly comparably, both guiding 100-voice symphonic choruses, in the same state, with similar demographics.
In terms of public-facing events and output, they look quite similar: Each presents three or four concerts a year in venues they’ve rented themselves, alongside professional instrumentalists whom a professional contractor has hired. They maintain an email list and send season announcement and concert reminder emails to it. They raise money from devoted patrons via solicitations and special events. Yet on the back end they’re quite different.
As the spouse of a software startup CEO with an MBA, I’m aware that there are countless case studies analyzing the comparative advantages and pitfalls of centralized versus distributed teams (especially in the days of work-from-home!). I’m aiming neither to prescribe nor promote one over the other; I’ve seen both work successfully. Instead, I hope to describe these two models, Centralized and Distributed, offer reflections on how and when they’ve hummed along or hit roadblocks, and highlight the indirect benefits they might confer to our ensembles.
Centralized Model
Chorus 1 operates within a centralized structure. It is governed by a Board of Directors that meets regularly but, with the exception of the Treasurer, doesn’t insert itself into day-to-day operations, opting instead to advise on matters of development and budget, oversee strategic planning every so often, and handle matters like employee searches. It employs a part-time Executive Director (ED) to handle all chorus operations. I use “all” advisedly; one person simply cannot do everything. The ED strategically engages a handful of capable volunteers to oversee discrete sets of tasks under their supervision and guidance. These include music ordering and distribution, planning and execution of the annual fundraiser event, management of the organization’s chamber chorus, ticketing tracking, seating charts and concert processions, etc. Experienced volunteers provide the ED with support at a brick-and-mortar office. Recently, the ED hired a marketing manager on a part-time freelance basis to create and execute a marketing plan.
The advantages of this centralized structure are straightforward. Some are quotidian. There is less need to align individual schedules or decode crossed, asynchronous email chains. One person interfaces with venue staff, print shops, tax professionals, and other vendors. Seen more broadly, where one person oversees all aspects of chorus management, they have the bird’s eye view and quickly come to understand how the different pieces of the puzzle work together. The right hand talks to the left when they’re appendages of the same person.
If that key staff person sticks around, the sedimentary accumulation of years of institutional memory becomes an invaluable record of the organization’s history.
That same value carries concomitant risk. If you’ve ever been singly responsible for the success of an organization, you’ve surely felt the crushing weight of being buried beneath multiple layers of accountability. If the sole person responsible for several aspects of preparation leading up to a concert gets backed up, the organization has to prioritize—or even triage—and innovative ideas might get dropped by dint of there being no one to carry them to fruition.
There also exists a potential continuity issue, should that person have to move on from that position, for whatever reason, and have the institutional memory encoded not in soft or hard copy but only in their head!
From my perspective as Artistic Director, this structure has facilitated big-picture thinking and long-range artistic planning. Where one person works with you to oversee all of the moving parts that go into a season, you can bounce artistic ideas off that one person with the assurance that they’ll see the implications of them across all of the areas involved, i.e., “How might we market this repertoire selection with that one to create a compelling season, and how will that relate to prior seasons, and will we have the venues to support them?”
For example, when the ED recently learned that the group was expecting a significant bequest, we sat down with the board president to think about how that gift would most strategically be deployed. (It led to an overhaul of the group’s website and digital strategy and the creation of a part-time marketing manager position to oversee both).
Seeing the big picture has also allowed the ED and me to think more clearly about the organization’s brand, and ask, “what are we really doing here?” and “what do we want to be doing?” with an understanding of all the implications of those questions’ possible answers. Some projects (such as Carmina Burana) have turned into repertory pieces for the ensemble because we understand how they fit into an eight or ten-year picture and support explorations into newer, less familiar works.
Members of Chorus 1 pay (relatively) higher dues knowing that they enable the salary of a professional ED tasked with running their chorus. When it’s working well, the prevailing sense of professionalism begets pride in the product.
Distributed Model
Chorus 2 has operated successfully for decades using a deliberately distributed organizational model. Its Board of Directors includes four officer positions: President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary. The remaining directors assume chairperson roles overseeing various specific areas, as secretaries in a presidential cabinet might. These include membership, music, production, marketing, financial development (fundraising, endowments, etc), and financial operations (ticketing, customer database, etc). Each of these board chairs oversees about a dozen “functionaries”—individual non-board volunteers responsible for executing a discrete task within their area. For example, one chorus member, under the oversight of the financial development chair, prints, stuffs, stamps, and sends tax acknowledgement letters, twice a year. Another, under the same chair, oversees the styling and presentation of gift baskets at the annual fundraiser, once a year. That’s it.
In the course of my career I have been involved with choruses that benefitted from volunteer labor but have suffered ups and downs due to a lack of task clarity or accountability (or both). Chorus 2’s thorough taxonomy identifies, and quantifies the many unique tasks that constitute chorus operations. The effect of enumerating and distributing the tasks is 1) to make each appear at once less daunting and more doable 2) to make tracking and accountability easier 3) to celebrate individual talents and interests among the membership. (Every other season, the membership completes a “skills survey” to help the board identify who might effectively fulfill certain functionary roles).
At the board level, it would seem that, buoyed by their teams of volunteer “functionaries,” board chairs avoid burnout and, after mandatory time off every three terms, frequently return to board service, often in a different role.
At the organizational level, this setup fosters a sense of inclusion and belonging and provides opportunities for assuming a high level of responsibility and recognition for singers who might not stand out, musically, as soloists, section leaders, or in other ways. It leverages long-serving volunteers as mentors to folks just starting out in their roles, often bridging generational divides within the ranks, as septuagenarians stuff raffle baskets alongside twenty-somethings, swapping bow-making secrets.
The spirit of volunteerism and the camaraderie it sparks have, for many decades, been the essence of Chorus 2’s DNA. A remarkable percentage of the membership has, at one time or another, served on the Board. And when it comes to volunteering, that number jumps higher: more than 80% of the membership has volunteered in a specific role over the years!
Among many members, over many years of membership, the tasks and tedium tackled as a team have transformed a choral organization into a different kind of community altogether. The camaraderie is an essential ingredient in ensemble building and positively impacts the music-making.
From the perspective of my artistic leadership, this model risks obscuring big-picture, decades-long thinking with season-by-season, concert-by-concert tactical concerns. Each season is, without fail, executed successfully, but, depending on the experience of those in the board chair positions, institutional history isn’t always at one’s fingertips. Fortunately, the otherwise undefined Vice President’s role within the codified board structure is to handle strategic planning and see the forest, not the trees.
Conclusion
Both Chorus 1 and Chorus 2 thrive. (I’d be remiss not to say both are devoted and enthusiastic users of Chorus Connection, which not only facilitates day-to-day operations but also serves as a repository for institutional memory!)
But in spite of their sharing an Artistic Director, and some twelve members between them, they operate differently and have, for lack of a better noun, distinct vibes. And, I think, therein lies the most important aspect of this discussion. Organizational structure, ideally, is of and for the constituents it serves. Where there is capacity and desire to turn over the work to professional staff, there is a higher likelihood that that model will thrive. Where there is an institutional ethos of sleeves-rolled-up volunteerism and “many hands make light work,” that model will thrive. So, while acknowledging that there’s of course a chicken-and-egg phenomenon at play, I can confidently say: There is no one best practice for chorus management. There is only that which best suits your organization.
What model does your choir use and what are the challenges and benefits you have discovered? Share your experiences in the comments below.
Ryan James Brandau is a New York City-based conductor & arranger celebrated for dynamic choral & orchestral performances. He leads Res Facta and Amor Artis, directs Princeton Pro Musica & Monmouth Civic Chorus, and has prepared choruses for major orchestras. A prolific arranger, Ryan's holiday works are lauded as inventive, and for his recent debut appearance at Trinity Church Wall Street, conducting its iconic annual Messiah, The New York Times praised his work as "urgent and eloquent." He holds degrees from Yale, Cambridge, and Princeton and is committed to bridging classical music with contemporary themes.