Last month we began a conversation on database options for the nano-nonprofit, characterized here as the smallest of artistic enterprises, often in the early years of operation, with annual budgets under $60,000, and/or having a paid staff of 5 persons or fewer (if not entirely volunteer-run). When considering data solutions that will allow these lean organizations to capture the nuances of their patron relationships by integrating multiple points of contact (attendance, donations, communications, and personal info), top considerations that emerge are price, ease of use, customer support, and email compatibility.
Time to Artify It
The art market is steadily adopting the online model, from auction houses to art fairs, from virtual exhibitions to limited edition online prints. Yet the success of this model remains circumspect, with questions abound; will online art fairs attract the clientele of Frieze Art Fair or Art Basel? Can aesthetic preferences be decoded by art genomes? Only in a few years will one be able to judge whether the online art world found success among pixels or became itself pixelated. For now, the move towards the digital has made room for interesting innovations in the area of art business, of which Art.sy, Paddle8, VIP Art Fair are some of the most well known.
Product Review: Choral Management Software
Since the ChorusAmerica conference is coming up this week, I have been looking into the growing field of choral management software. I began with the question of why choruses would invest in discipline-specific software instead of a more general tool. In conversations with creators of three relatively new tools (Choral Management Package, Groupanizer, and Museminder), it became apparent that choruses have some very specific needs that more general management software isn't addressing well -- needs such as managing repertoire, tracking attendance, sharing calendars, and maintaining a performance history.
The tools in this article have a wide variety of features, capabilities, and pricing structures. Each has the potential to save you time, ease communication, and prevent duplicate work. I encourage you to try the demos and videos to see if a program is a good fit for your chorus.
And, as always, let us know about your own experiences. Are you using a choral management program? Do you have a favorite piece of software that isn't listed here?
Choral Management Package (CMP)
In 2004, Filemaker7 invited the public to enter their innovative software solutions into a contest. In response, Ray Fahrner reworked a system he had built for his own choir into a package that could be useful to a wide range of choruses. He didn't win the contest, but his changes and the feedback he got from testers and reviewers led to the release of the Choral Management Package (CMP) in 2005.
CMP has a mix of choral-specific features -- such as a music library and event history -- along with capabilities to track financial transactions and to manage contacts. While the tool is designed to help any director, Fahrner noted that it is most helpful to the busiest directors and to directors who manage multiple choruses.
Fahrner emphasized that CMP is a true "package" -- a self-contained, downloadable program that you install on your desktop. During a transition to a new computer, the entire database can be burned onto a CD and installed on the new machine.
The Choral Management Package is available to download for a one-time fee, which includes 30 minutes of tech support or customization. A free demo is available via the CMP website.
Groupanizer, the newest of these three, hit the market in early 2009. Tom Metzger created the software with communication foremost in his mind. He describes Groupanizer as a "private social network for choruses." Leaders can update calendars and send emails, and chorus members can update their learning progress and access shared files such as member handbooks or policies.
Metzger explained that the more members a chorus has, the more the group will benefit from automation. Smaller groups can benefit as well, but they often have fewer resources for technology -- a primary driver behind Groupanizer's tiered pricing based on group size.
Metzger is working on an update that allows members with certain "roles" to connect to tailored job descriptions and timelines. He also has plans to release versions in German, Finnish, and Swedish in the near future.
Groupanizer's monthly fee depends on the size of your chorus. A 30-day trial is available online.
Margaret Cribbs originally created Museminder as a dance studio management program. In 2007, seeing the technology needs her own chorus faced, she began tailoring the system to handle choral management as well.
In reworking the program for choruses, one of Cribbs' main projects was to create a music library. This library allows you to search for pieces using information such as composer, arrangement, language, or number of copies. Other features of the original studio management software are of particular benefit to choruses as well -- including personalized calendars, integrated email, attendance tracking, and an array of reports. The event management component allows touring choirs to manage their tour rehearsals, performances, and promotional events all in one place.
Cribbs explained that mid- to large-sized choruses would benefit most from her software, as would choruses that need to track a substantial number of financial transactions.
Cribbs is working on an update that links the music library to the event component, which will give users historical information such as when a piece was last performed.
Information about Museminder's monthly fee is available on the FAQ page. The online users guide contains videos and screenshots of the program.
Product Review: Online Submission Tools for Music, Video, Visual Art, and Writing
Now that websites and email addresses are as ubiquitous as mailing addresses and phone numbers, organizations that accept submissions have a new way of receiving work from artists. Many find that receiving submissions via email can be overwhelming, and coordinating review of pieces among judges or editors can result in a lot of cluttered in-boxes and overlooked submissions. Getting a panel together to review portfolios for a competition may be costly, and relying on the numerous moving parts and unforeseen expenses adds a level of complication that could be unnecessary. Fortunately, there are a number of products that have been developed over the past few years that are designed specifically for everything from publishers to film festivals. These online tools enable organizations to receive submissions and have a review process that cuts out the need for endless emails or envelopes of slides or manuscripts.
All of the products below have a central place online where submissions are uploaded by applicants and stored for review, annotation, comments, and more by administrators or jurors. They each excel in different mediums, and have a variety of costs associated with them.
Developed by a writer, this free program was intended to enable small journals and publications to accept and review submissions in a more streamlined and organized manner. Slightly customizable to link from and match your website, this submission tool offers unexpected flexibility and enables publishers to accept payment (submission fees, etc.) electronically with the submission. Developers of submishmash have extended the scope of downloads to include photos, music, and additional types of media. Submishmash streamlines the review process, allowing editors to communicate with one another, make notes on what stage of the process they are in, and enable the authors of work to check in on their submissions to see what stage of the review process they're in. Files are downloaded to editor's computer for review. Quick list of notable features:
Handles word documents (automatically converts to PDF when reviewers download), images, and audio files
Ability to email form and personal letters to author and editors with one click
Ability to fund contests and publications by charging submission fees without setting up a PayPal account
Streamline the editing process and eliminating the messiness and confusion of email submission acceptance by putting all work in one place for review
Allows authors to submit word documents which are automatically converted into PDF for review
Publisher can run multiple competitions and calls for submissions simultaneously
Free to use (if you do end up charging for submissions, a small percentage of that is taken by developers)
Submishmash developers are working on more customizable and advanced versions that will be available for purchase, but plans to keep the current version free.
*CueRate is a product of the Center for Arts Management and Technology, home of this blog.
cuerate
CueRate is an extremely flexible and powerful tool for arts organizations of all types. Designed especially for organizations "where artists or students apply for scholarships, fellowships, awards or grants," CueRate enables submissions of images, video, audio, or text, and can handle multiple file uploads at one time. Embeddable in your website, it allows artists to submit a resume and artistic statement in addition to their artwork. Files can be reviewed within the application itself, preventing panelists from having to download items onto their computers. Designed to assist large juried competitions with accepting and reviewing submissions from around the world, CueRate has a variety of capabilities that can be implemented both remotely and onsite.
Designed to accept written, video, audio, and image files
Submissions do not need to be downloaded onto your computer, but can be reviewed in the browser
Artist statements, resume, and responses to particular questions can be answered and included with submissions
Customizable to match your website
Tech support
Variable expense based on your organization's needs
Panelists can review from remote locations or adjucation can be moderated in one location with panelists scoring individually but experiencing work at once
Customize your rating system
Score entries in a manner that can be converted into excel, pdf, and online files
entrythingy
Offering a free trial, entrythingy is geared toward galleries and festivals that accept only submissions of images. Structured similarly to CueRate, Entrythingy has many of the same features, and the cost to an organization depends entirely on the volume of submissions received. The website for Entrythingy offers many videos to step interested organizations through the process of using the product.
Handles image files
Entries can be judged online or by jurors downloading work to their computers
Accepted entries can be shown in an online gallery using embeddable code
Entrythingy pricing is based on the volume of submissions received, entrant emails sent, length of time artwork is stored on the site, and gallery sales made using the gallery widget
Organization can hold and accept entries for multiple competitions simultaneously
Good do-it-yourself information online with videos and screen shots to help organizations learn functionality
Slideroom Juror View
Like CueRate, Slideroom has proven ideal for organizations and institutions that accept submissions of portfolios of visual work. Used most widely by colleges and universities, reviewers can make comments on images and share these comments with others who are viewing the submissions. From a juror's standpoint, the online layout is snazzy and sharp, and access can be customized across users. Slideroom also allows administrators to generate reports in Excel and PDF.
Handles image files
Online help and support
Attractive layout and design
Pricing plan based on plan level and can be a monthly or annual fee
Applicants see a very clean and simple layout
Applicants can upload text files to include statement and resume
Standardized rating system where jurors can rate pieces and portfolios
Meeting Wizard - Coordinate meetings with ease
meetingwizard1
Does this scenario sound familiar? You need to bring a group of people together for an in-person meeting or a conference call. You send out an e-mail suggesting some dates/times for the potential meeting or call and ask the group to reply with their availability. The group sends a barrage of e-mails to you -- only for you to realize that none of the suggested dates/times will work for the entire group. So, it's back to the drawing board... I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to be that way. Thanks to the geniuses at MeetingWizard.com, there is a free, online service that: sends out meeting invitations, tracks respondents' availability, confirms meetings, and sends out meeting reminders -- all in one easy-to-use system.
So how does it work? After signing up for a free account:
1. You invite participants providing a number of optional dates/times.
meetingwizard-step1
2. Participants respond to invitations by indicating when they are available.
meetingwizard-step2
3. You confirm the meeting or event after reviewing responses.
meetingwizard-step3
In addition, there are many other features that ensure you don't forget important details, and that all participants receive complete information about meetings.
Probably the best aspect of MeetingWizard is the fact that users only need an e-mail address and access to a Web browser in order to use it. By keeping the user-side technology simple, they have quite cleverly created a practically universal tool.
A colleague of mine mentioned this tool to me about three years ago, and it has proven to be both an immense time-saver and a wonderful frustration reducer. It has become such a trusted tool in my administrative "bag of tricks" that I tend to assume that everyone knows about it and uses it also.
After watching two resourceful colleagues wrestle with coordinating meetings earlier this week, I mentioned MeetingWizard to them only to learn that they had never heard of it. My high school geometry teacher told me never to assume, because it makes an...well, you know what it does.
So check out MeetingWizard today and reduce your administrative stress!