Engage
Houston
Connections
Multiply
of Engage Houston
Celebrating 10 Years
of Engage Houston
Countless
unpredictable
results.
This is the story of how Mid-America Arts Alliance collaborated with arts and cultural organizations in Houston and saw beautiful results unfold.
The year was 2011. Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) was just at the start of what would be a decade-long capacity-building journey for small to midsize organizations—but first, they had to know what was needed.
What was life like for arts and cultural nonprofits?
They needed specific guidance for a deeply involved job.
“Running a nonprofit is an often lonely experience… you don't always have a guidebook for what you're supposed to do next, and you're kind of feeling your way through it.”
– An Arts Education and Performance Institute
They were also eager to think beyond the isolated day-to-day and towards their future.
“[We realized] the whole thing has to be turned on its head in how it's organized from the get-go, in order for it to be not just inclusive, but to be activated.”
– A Nonprofit Music Organization
What did they discover?
After an initial needs assessment*, M-AAA discovered that Houston arts and cultural organizations needed support for…
Improved governance and management to achieve each organization’s unique goals.
Closer connections with audiences and underserved communities.
Opportunities for networking between arts and cultural organizations.
These became the building blocks of Engage Houston.
*Thanks to the Houston Endowment’s generous support.
“Engage Houston totally changed the trajectory of our organization. It was an awakening… as we broadened our view, we learned so much from others.”
— An Arts Museum
The Formula
2 + 2 = 8
At its core, Engage Houston was a capacity-building program that gave organizations both individual support and a peer network.
But when people dared to break their routine and see each other as collaborators, unexpected things happened. One idea led to the next which led to the next until their whole journey became greater than the sum of its parts.
Beautiful things began to unfold in kaleidoscopic color.
Working together as fellow creators and culture-makers opened everyone’s mind to new possibilities. Engage Houston was about individual growth and evolution for arts and cultural organizations, but it was also about the exponential power of collaboration. All it took was one meaningful connection to create a domino effect of change for the entire arts and culture community, the city, and the region as a whole.
The core goals of the Engage Houston program were to:
Expand the understanding of nonprofit leadership and management so organizations can adapt to change, respond to challenges, and sustainably provide their programs to the Houston community.
Increase each organization’s curiosity and interest in their audiences, to inspire impactful and relevant programs with diversity, inclusion, and access in mind.
Combine Houston’s distinct, varied arts and cultural organizations in one interdependent network, designed to amplify engagement with their communities.
To measure success in meeting these goals, Engage Houston focused on three key areas:
Finance and Fundraising
Building good financial management habits and improving fundraising efforts.
Governance
Activating mission-focused
collaborative governance.
Community Engagement
Understanding and adapting to serve audiences and communities better.
(capacity building x personalization)collaboration
= Engage
By meeting organizations where they were, Engage Houston addressed long-term, large-scale issues that had impacted their finances, audiences, and governing structures. This personalization, combined with the learning that comes from peer-to-peer discussions, led to incredible results.
Across three iterations of Engage Houston, we counted…
843 individualized coach consultations and retreat facilitations, virtually and in-person, spent working towards custom solutions together.
These were led by coaches Brian Crockett
and Carla Patterson.
31 peer learning cohort sessions spent collaborating, networking and growing together.
These sessions explored topics related to the core principles of Engage: finance and fundraising, governance, and community engagement.
24 topic-specific workshops diving into specific subject areas as a group.
The workshops addressed participants’ needs, led by experts in finance, marketing, antiracism, and more. Some were open to the public.
$329,900 in grants and stipends spent empowering participants to join forces and connect with their communities.
These grants enabled participants to join the program and implement their engagement ideas.
17 peer leadership sessions spent learning adaptive leadership
and resilience.
These sessions were for Engage alumni, helping leaders in Houston examine ways to service their staff, board, and constituents more effectively.
The Impact
The Exponential Impact
Individual personalities
+ open collaboration
= community
As each iteration of Engage took place, the arts and culture community bloomed in Houston. The organizations who embraced the journey found that a peer-to-peer network didn’t mean leaving behind what makes them unique. Instead, they learned how to make the best use of their individual strengths.
Unexpected Outcomes Through the Years
Through the program, these organizations found freedom in not having to compete with peers that had different sizes, art forms, or audiences. It led to peer networking that extended far beyond Engage Houston participants to nonprofits that had never been in the program. These organizations learned to collaborate with everyone across disciplines, communities, and the city.
Flexibility isn’t just helpful, it’s crucial to success moving forward. 85% of survey respondents felt that Engage III helped them adapt to the drastic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The People Behind the Numbers
To the entire Engage Houston community — thank you.
A Letter from M-AAA
The creation of Engage and deep financial investment in the arts and cultural ecosystem of Houston by the Houston Endowment has been phenomenal. Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA) has been very privileged to have had such long-term support, totaling $4,561,500 for this program over the span of 2011–2020. The Endowment led the way in creating a learning environment with this program and we learned so much, together, about the nature of the arts and culture sector. Through the triumphs of the accomplishments of Engage organizations and the tragedy of Harvey, we were able to respond in real time to the ever-changing environment, evolving to the needs of the community. The methodology of the Engage program has always been to celebrate organizational individuality, in all the ways in which that is revealed. What was revealed were stories of resilience, resourcefulness, and creative re-imagination.
The Houston Endowment and M-AAA created something that has existed nowhere else in the United States: a decade of commitment to nurture the arts and culture infrastructure. Through this process, Engage created a community of learners, represented by the leadership of seventy organizations. Without the relationship built over many years with the Houston Endowment, the deep roots Engage established for M-AAA in Houston could not have occurred. In no other city outside of our hometown have we become as elemental to the arts ecosystem. We have fallen in love with the organizations we’ve served and feel they became a part of our M-AAA family. We are grateful to the Houston Endowment for the trusted relationship they established with M-AAA and the extraordinary privilege to work with and learn from the Engage family of organizations.
— Todd Stein, President and CEO of Mid-America Arts Alliance
A Letter from the Coaches
As Coaches we witnessed Engage organizations at their very worst and very best.
We came to know your financial pressures, Board politics, staff changes, and artistic conflicts.
We witnessed you work in cramped quarters and hot studios.
We shared your victories, glowing reviews, and never-ending rounds of applause.
We watched you make cuts, compromise your dreams, and reach out for help.
We saw you improve, learn new tricks, and test fresh directions.
We also saw your determination to serve, to reach farther, and to include more.
We weren’t Teachers.
We were Coaches.
We can’t claim your Engage success.
But your example was invigorating.
And we were privileged to work at your side, to learn as you learned, and to grow as you grew.
— Brian Crockett and Carla Patterson, Coaches
Participants
“I really do think that [M-AAA] are the ones that are best equipped to define and decide what the next kind of collaborative work is.”
— Engage I participant
Mid-America Arts Alliance is optimistic about the future of capacity-building programs, thanks to the groundbreaking success and collaboration that came from Engage Houston. With a fifty-year history of delivering innovative professional development services, it will continue providing programs that create mission-centric, inclusive, evolving, and equitable institutions.
Engage is a twenty-four month initiative that takes a “deep-dive” approach to professional development, working with small to midsize arts and cultural organizations committed to public service. Engage inspires participants to become active learners and invigorate a renewed community that is collaborative.
In 2018 Kansas City-based organizations received the Engage Kansas City program, which built upon Engage Houston’s successes. Engage Kansas City participants worked together with a coach to address the three pillars of governance, finance and fundraising, and engagement that was unique to their city and their communities.
A program developed to deliver Engage’s capacity-building programming to organizations that share a regional density.
A space for next-level thinking around the ways in which poverty, exclusion, and bias impact our institutions and community engagement efforts, as well as its impacts on an organization’s mission.
This twenty-four-month program in Northwest Arkansas deepens the impact of ten nonprofit arts and cultural organizations committed to mission-driven community engagement. This program focuses on organizational effectiveness while building connections and dedication to serving the community’s needs. Organizations work with a coach to address governance, finance and fundraising, and engagement for sector-wide issues like diversity and inclusion, cross-sector partnerships, and other relevant topics.
Visuals for this report were generously provided by participating organizations (photography), Hakaya the Storytellers (photography and videography), Gisele Parra (photography), and Rene Cruz (illustrations). Thank you for your support in capturing the magic of the Engage Houston program.