Re-Invention of DCI

[jeff_demello]

This TED-talk video should be watched by every Board Member and every Director of every Drum Corps, as well as every show sponsor. It presents a way of thinking that is a real game-changer to how we think about non-profits.

(It might help if some of you replace the words "non-profit" with "drum corps" and "for-profit" with "professional entertainers")

Please watch: this entire video.

[normy diploome]

Jeff,

Thank you for posting this video. There is much here to consider.

But the paradigm placement is pivotal in distinguishing how, if, and when his financial philosophy should be applied to drum corps whether our activity be seen as a non-profit, not for profit, or profit making business.

For one, this man is speaking in macro images which is a very different set of glasses from the usual drum corps afficianado worrying about mortgage, job security, marital/familial security, personal health, personal happiness and responsibility to others whatever the moral motivation. The key sentence is understanding his statement about the 12 per cent rate of poverty. He is seeking to irradicate the whole problem. It's my conviction that most persons in the drum corps dialogue aren't that messianic but are thinking "how do I survive so I don't fall further into that 12 percent?" When one is living breath to breath, being entrepreneurial is beyond the Black Hole.

In my professional life of thirty plus years outside of drum corps, I have worked in Gold Coast communities in community leadership and very successfully if sucess is judged by the bottom lines improved and advanced and individuals serviced and challenged. I have also worked as intimately in communities where there was no such animal as luxury money, disposable income, or opportunistic budgets of funding distributions by alternative possibilities. That is, hand to mouth situations.

The "haves" think differently from the "don't haves" because the starting point is different. Your video highlights some of that, i.e. risk vs. survival modes. But most involved in our drum corps activity come from the survival mode communities with 9 per cent unemployment at the least, families which have to deal with a 52% divorce rate upsetting basic personal confidence, and extremely changing neighborhoods which gave rise to the activity at its roots. Whether one accents drum corps as an activity which is there ultimately to form a better individual or whether one starts at how do we advance the corporation, the current corps, and make the activity more popular are very different starting points. I believe all of these are different facets of one diamond, a diamond which has flawed facets and polished facets. Some of us will accent one (individual formation) and find another outside our realm of perception (corporate business, for instance.) Some will be great for the board room and horrible for helping the teenager who's girl friend just dumped him, his college has changed the matriculation of the major he has been studying and is charging more tuition plus, and his parents have been fighting more times than he can remember them hugging. So of course he's having problems focusing on the set change for today or the blind pass-through at syncopated meters. It's like a chicken talking to a duck (old Chinese proverb.)

Both conversations need to be had, both skill sets are needed for the health of the activity. But the realistic dilemna is that folks of the G7 and boardroom world aren't talking the same language or conversation as the person who sees drum corps as a vehicle to learn personal excellence in a community setting. Neither is more right than the other. But the different priorities do lead to different choices for different applications and generate far different conclusions. If I am not sure whether I'll have food in my fridge, I certainly am not going to be impressed by your risk taking with my hard earned money. But since one cannot live life without risks, the challenge here still remains.

I'll have to watch this video again and reflect some more. This is a fertile ground worth hoeing; I just don't know what seeds are being planted or what fruits are being expected.

[ranintothedoor]

I'd really like to see more discussion on this topic while I simmer on this video. Some of my initial thoughts...

- Would corps be patient enough or even survive if DCI spent significantly more on advertisement and fundraising? I mean, that money wouldn't go to the "cause" (re: show pay outs to corps). These performing ensembles rely heavily on DCI's revenue.

- So then we look at the corps themselves... could they survive putting much more into fundraising and marketing themselves since they already put so much of their revenue into their "cause" (providing the best possible experience for young musicians by putting on amazing/expensive field productions)?

- Would we be upset with corps if they sacrificed several years of show quality/placements by moving money away from instructors/equipment to compensate for higher CEO wages in order to draw in some talent? Or would we revolt and demand their heads?

[Slingerland]

Would we be upset with corps if they sacrificed several years of show quality/placements by moving money away from instructors/equipment to compensate for higher CEO wages in order to draw in some talent? Or would we revolt and demand their heads?

Scale is the key here. As I've noted (and a few others), if DCI has to invest in a management team who costs a bit more than the current staff, but the new team brings with them the type of business contacts and experience that can increase the overall revenues significantly, the real expense of that move is relatively small. For ex, if they increase costs by $2 million, but realize an additional $3m in gross, $1m in net as a result, how is that a loss?

Pure coincidence that he uses bake sales as his example of inappropriate funding mechanisms too.

Edited March 23, 2013 by Slingerland

[Kamarag]

Scale is the key here. As I've noted (and a few others), if DCI has to invest in a management team who costs a bit more than the current staff, but the new team brings with them the type of business contacts and experience that can increase the overall revenues significantly, the real expense of that move is relatively small,.

Any real-deal management team that could potentially be brought in is going to demand sweeping power...power I'm not sure the corps directors would be willing to cede.

[Stu]

I watched the video two full times. I heard Dan Pallotta discussing non-profits in the sense of health and human services; as in the charities which help the most needy human beings on the planet. If you want to apply his words to DCI, I honestly believe that he would want his non-profit philosophical business structure to be used to help DCI support corps which take kids off the streets and place horns to their mouths instead of crack pipes, and place sticks in their hands instead of guns; conversely, I also believe that Mr. Pallotta would reel in convulsions at the thought of DCI using his non-profit business philosophy in the name of facilitating the best of the best youth musicians in the world while dumping the gun wielding crack pipe kids off to other organizations. Just my opinion, of course.

Edited March 23, 2013 by Stu

[Slingerland]

I watched the video two full times. I heard Dan Pallotta discussing non-profits in the sense of health and human services; as in the charities which help the most needy human beings on the planet. If you want to apply his words to DCI, I honestly believe that he would want his non-profit philosophical business structure to be used to help DCI support corps which take kids off the streets and place horns to their mouths instead of crack pipes, and place sticks in their hands instead of guns; conversely, I also believe that Mr. Pallotta would reel in convulsions at the thought of DCI using his non-profit business philosophy in the name of facilitating the best of the best youth musicians in the world while dumping the gun wielding crack pipe kids off to other organizations. Just my opinion, of course.

Many corps have scholarship programs set up already (I contribute to one of them). If every corps - even the despised 7 - were able to generate enough of a return from their activities that they could afford to offer full-ride memberships on a larger scale, is there any reason to believe that they wouldn't?

They would. Increasing their available funds by going bigger on the operations and marketing side would expand their ability to offer the service they do.

The goal of any non-profit charitable organization is to change human hearts and grow human capacity.The belief that only those who are in the hellholes of the inner city deserve service is actually tied to the Puritan belief he mentioned that only some people are "deserving" of a charitable service. Giving young people an opportunity where they're required to expand their own capacity, as leaders and individuals, is a service to the society, regardless of the incomes of those kids' parents. A couple kids I've helped have gone on to be educators, two of them in inner city neighborhood schools. Those drum corps donations are having an impact in ways that go beyond just the day to day experience of getting on a bus and driving overnight to Akron.

Creating a better, stronger organization to market the work of the individual service providers (the corps) would put the activity in a situation where they would have the financial capability to do more, and do it more efficiently. But the bake sale mentality will never do anything more than provide a loaf of bread for today's dinner.

Edited March 23, 2013 by Slingerland

[garfield]

Many corps have scholarship programs set up already (I contribute to one of them). If every corps - even the despised 7 - were able to generate enough of a return from their activities that they could afford to offer full-ride memberships on a larger scale, is there any reason to believe that they wouldn't?

They would. Increasing their available funds by going bigger on the operations and marketing side would expand their ability to offer the service they do.

The goal of any non-profit charitable organization is to change human hearts and grow human capacity.The belief that only those who are in the hellholes of the inner city deserve service is actually tied to the Puritan belief he mentioned that only some people are "deserving" of a charitable service. Giving young people an opportunity where they're required to expand their own capacity, as leaders and individuals, is a service to the society, regardless of the incomes of those kids' parents. A couple kids I've helped have gone on to be educators, two of them in inner city neighborhood schools. Those drum corps donations are having an impact in ways that go beyond just the day to day experience of getting on a bus and driving overnight to Akron.

Creating a better, stronger organization to market the work of the individual service providers (the corps) would put the activity in a situation where they would have the financial capability to do more, and do it more efficiently. But the bake sale mentality will never do anything more than provide a loaf of bread for today's dinner.

I love it when you wax poetic, Slinger-of-opinion />. It's clear that we disagree in our solution sets, but it's also clear that you have the same devotion to the activity for what it does for kids that I do. I support the activity because of what it does to minds; it doesn't matter where the minds come from.

But the bolded above is bothersome on a couple of levels. First, and call it a function of my job, your definitive words of what will "market" the activity are, at best, hopes of an effective solution. You don't use "could", you use "would" and your implication is that "this is THE way forward'. When (again, my profession) in real life, there are simply too many variables that have to line up in order for your solution to be effective.

Then, the application. "Creating a better, stronger organization..." (very similar, in fact, to the 5-year plan's language that you discarded as "weak" in that other thread) is lofty in presentation, but you, as yet, have not gotten any more specific than claiming that having the "right people" with the "right connections" forms your solution. I contend that you can't identify the "right person" until you address this issue...

"...to market the "work" of..." the member corps... What work? In the context of this thread (and our shared beliefs) it would seem it's the work of molding minds and growing aspirations. That stated goal that is so marketable is barely visible on any corps website. You have to learn to click through to the "About" tab, then to the "Mission" tab in order to find out what the corps' actual mission is. The home page is always about the season, the show, the entertainment, the tryouts, the new instructors hired. It would seem that the corps fail individually in showcasing the point, the "work" of the activity.

"...would put the activity in the position where they would have the financial capability to do more..." What is that? What position would a "better, stronger" organization put "them" in (and I presume you mean the corps). What "financial capability"? In how long. If you admire the video's speaker as being able to spend $300,000 marketing a campaign that raised millions, what financial capability are you speaking of, the marketing of the mission and why prospective fans should be involved, or being entertained by the elite of the marching activity?

What, in your vision, would the organization actually DO to attain this position? Simply sell connections on the financial benefits of exposure to our shows? Or trumpet what we DO. To the minds and bodies. Or would the "better/stronger" organization focus on the entertainment and ticket-selling and eyeball-producing aspects of the activity? You say that DCI's sole focus should be generating revenue, ostensibly to distribute to corps so that they can do good work. But even the corps' own websites don't trumpet that good work.

Exactly what would the better/stronger org do to re-balance that brand disparity?

Wouldn't it be a better use of assets to, initially at least, put the effort into focusing the prospective audience's attention on what drum corps IS, instead of the show the corps put on the field? Wouldn't an activity focused on that one common aspect be a stronger sale proposition to a potential sponsor and/or leader than one that highlights the performance differences between corps? How can an activity show strength of message (the good work) when the members are split into classes based on performance scores?

Do prospective fans care more about "the best of the marching activity" or about the good that marching does for minds and bodies? We know that marketers care about eyeballs and turnstiles, but it's up to the activity to define what it is.

If we decide that drum corps is about minds and bodies, and we agree that all corps provide that experience in today's drum corps, how do you reconcile dividing up corps based performance order?

Edited March 23, 2013 by garfield

[Slingerland]

The five-year plan (if this is what you're referring to) was nibbling around the edges, and focused on bake sale initiatives. Why focus on Indy, San Antonio, and Atlanta (yes, I know they have shows there; it's a rhetorical)? Ever heard of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles? They're much bigger markets.

(To show how goofy the current direction is, ask yourself; is there a major regional in the Chicago area? No. But there is a major show in that historical hotbed of drum corps activity - Minneapolis. As a general rule, you try not to move your product so far away that those who are most naturally interested in buying it have to travel long distances in order to get it. )

How many people paid anything for a drum corps related product last year? Maybe 250,000 unique individuals, if that? In a country of 300 million people. Well, given what the actual polling tells about about Americans' feelings about musical skills, it's hard to believe that the activity's penetration into the US market is anywhere near maxed out right now.

You're confusing the "what" drum corps does from a capacity building standpoint with the "how" drum corps funds it. The "what" is inherent in the activity itself. If you put kids in a situation where there is a pure meritocracy (and drum corps does that very well), they'll learn the lessons of individual responsibility and of team building skills, in ways they don't often see in other areas of their lives. In order to DO THAT, the corps themselves need to have a reliable stream of income - that's the "how" of it. They're two different concepts, and DCI's focus should be on creating the opportunities for the organizations to realize enough income from their activities (the "how") so that the corps themselves can do a great job of providing the "what" to an ever-widening pool of young people.

Edited March 23, 2013 by Slingerland

[garfield]

The five-year plan (if this is what you're referring to) was nibbling around the edges, and focused on bake sale initiatives. Why focus on Indy, San Antonio, and Atlanta (yes, I know they have shows there; it's a rhetorical)? Ever heard of Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles? They're much bigger markets.

(To show how goofy the current direction is, ask yourself; is there a major regional in the Chicago area? No. But there is a major show in that historical hotbed of drum corps activity - Minneapolis. As a general rule, you try not to move your product so far away that those who are most naturally interested in buying it have to travel long distances in order to get it. )

How many people paid anything for a drum corps related product last year? Maybe 250,000 unique individuals, if that? In a country of 300 million people. Well, given what the actual polling tells about about Americans' feelings about musical skills, it's hard to believe that the activity's penetration into the US market is anywhere near maxed out right now.

You're confusing the "what" drum corps does from a capacity building standpoint with the "how" drum corps funds it. The "what" is inherent in the activity itself. If you put kids in a situation where there is a pure meritocracy (and drum corps does that very well), they'll learn the lessons of individual responsibility and of team building skills, in ways they don't often see in other areas of their lives. In order to DO THAT, the corps themselves need to have a reliable stream of income - that's the "how" of it. They're two different concepts, and DCI's focus should be on creating the opportunities for the organizations to realize enough income from their activities (the "how") so that the corps themselves can do a great job of providing the "what" to an ever-widening pool of young people.

Umm, because there are no domed stadiums in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles?

But that's it? The new "super-duper" owners of DCI are going to book different cities? And because DCI chose the only domed stadium within a few hours' drive of 70% of the country's population, they're incompetent?

I'm not confusing anything. In fact, I'm highlighting the disparity between the marketing message that would most sell the entire activity versus your solution that, in effect, benefits only a small subset of that activity.

Instead of changing the leadership to promote the same message why not put energy into promoting the common message that is shared by all corps? You believe the message should be "Here are our winners, our elite, the ones we put most of our energy into", where I believe the message is "here's our activity and what it does for kids' minds and bodies, and youth can get those benefits regardless of the corps they choose".

I believe my message carries further across a broader population of potential recruits than does yours. Kids who join Academy will soon enough find out about "the elite", but during that discovery they'll still gain the advantages that the activity provides all participants. And that's not necessarily a ring.

I'm sure you know what the "what" is. I also think your solution sells the "how" by promoting winning instead of the "what" by promoting participation.