Strategic Planning, Technology Assessment, Stakeholder Research, and Organizational & Business Model Development (2021)
Facing rising internal and external pressures, SMU DataArts hired Justin Birdsong to help define a new strategic operating plan, inclusive of staff and organizational structure, service delivery model, and data collection mechanisms.
DataArts is a subsidiary of the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University (SMU). The organization was originally founded in 2004 as an arts service organization that maintained a custom data collection platform for arts & cultural organizations to submit financial, programmatic, and operating data to support grantmaking, advocacy, and organizational financial health. Having gone through multiple business model transformations and parent organizations, and reckoning with shifting perceptions about DataArts’ role as a barrier to equitable access to funding, DataArts sought a new strategic direction that could ensure the organization’s relevance and longevity for years to come.
We conducted extensive interviews with DataArts’ staff, board, and a cross-section of its three key customer audiences: arts & cultural nonprofits, private and government funders, and research partners. We also researched “lookalikes” and peer organizations to identify other operating models that could provide a sustainable alternative structure for DataArts. Because data collection and both academic and paid research are crucial to DataArts’ value proposition, we proposed alternative data collection models that would reduce the data entry burden for DataArts’ sector-wide “survey” respondents while providing value-based incentives for orgs willing to participate in deeper research.
We conducted a comprehensive evaluation of DataArts’ technology ecosystem and analyzed its implications for their staffing structure and service model. Based on our assessment, we provided multiple implementation scenarios and change management roadmaps to give the organization various options to explore as they evolved their strategic direction. DataArts adopted our recommended approach, which came to form the backbone of their 2023-25 Strategic Plan.
