Memo- Art Center Staffing Sept 13th Work SessionHOPKINS CENTER FOR THE ARTS
MEMORANDUM
To: Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council
FROM: Amanda Birnstengel, Arts Center Director
DATE: September 7th, 2011
SUBJECT: Art Center Staffing September 13th Work Session
After six months in my role as Art Center Director, I have had a chance to evaluate the
organization and have set the following goals to help the Arts Center move toward
financial self sufficiency:
• Increase rentals to external clients
• Increase support by members, both individual and corporate
• Increase ticket sales to concert series
In order to help meet these goals, I propose maintaining the existing number of staff
(3.6, excluding custodial), and reorganizing responsibilities.
With the retirement of the current Scheduling Coordinator, there is the possibility to
expand the expectations and role of the position, while actually decreasing the cost.
The current role of the Scheduling Coordinator goes beyond simply scheduling space
and is important to the successful functioning of the Center. It includes determining set
up, AN, and furniture needs, scheduling part-time staff to cover those shifts, verify
insurance documents, signed agreements and deposits are received, and to invoice for
those events.
My recommendation is to revise the position title to a Sales and Development Manager,
keep it in the same pay range, and to include an outbound sales role. While continuing
to provide the service required to our existing base, the role would also be responsible
for actively reviewing available times in theater and JC Studio and promoting rental
opportunities to past and new clients. In addition this position would be working on
promoting membership in the Friends of the Hopkins Center for the Arts, corporate
membership, advertising in the season brochure, and sponsorships.
It is very likely the position will filled by an extremely strong internal candidate who is
now in the part-time position.
This proposed restructuring should allow the Center to move toward meeting its goals of
increasing revenue while slightly reducing staffing costs.
It would be problematic for the Art Center Director to pick up the Scheduling
Coordinator responsibilities. While the current Art Center Director is focused 100%
on the Center versus the prior incumbent who was on the books at 75% of the time at
the Center, the following should be taken into account.
In the new vision of unifying the two aspects of the HCA — Facility/Administration
and Arts Programming, the Art Center Director is much more active on the Arts
side of the equation. The Director is attending the majority of arts events to
promote the Center, which the prior Facility Director did not do. Over the next 12
months, this will include approximately 16 concerts, 13 art openings, and 12
Board Meetings for the Friends of the Hopkins Center for the Arts, in addition to
presence at various other events such as Cinco de Mayo, the Somali
Celebration, Rotary Club, etc.
• For the last several years, the Executive Arts Director has consistently has
worked 60 hour weeks, and frequently even more. The work load includes:
visual arts programming (15 art exhibitions in the next season), booking and
executing the intensive concert schedule, writing grants, keeping the financial
reports for the Friends, marketing and promotion, etc.
In order to reduce the work load slightly, increase concert ticket sales, and
increase general awareness of the Center and its activities, the Art Center
Director is taking over the marketing and advertising efforts from the Executive
Arts Director. This includes working with multiple vendors to place ads, updating
multiple on line calendars to increase exposure to new audiences, updating
social media such as Facebook and Twitter, partnering with the City
Communications person to produce a new look, etc.
• Having a consistent point of contact for the rental clients is preferable to splitting
it between two people. While it can be managed, the potential for missing details
when two people are juggling contacts is higher than when one person is
handling from start to finish.
The recommendation is to move forward with replacing the Scheduling
Coordinator Position as described above. Having the new person identified and on
board in early November, to train with the existing staff member will ensure a smooth
transition.
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