Booz Allen's Insights Help Define a Clear Path of Development for Evidence Dance

For this New York modern dance company, significant growth and wide recognition is achievable by 2010.

By blending African, modern, ballet, and social dance styles to define the human experience, Evidence – A Dance Company has carved out a unique niche in New York’s performing arts community. In fact, the New York Times called Evidence’s founder and artistic director, Ronald K. Brown, “one of the most profound choreographers of his modern dance generation.”

Reggie Van Lee

Evidence – A Dance Company celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2010. “They’ve already achieved artistic excellence,” says Booz Allen Hamilton senior vice president Reggie Van Lee, who chairs Evidence’s board of directors. “Now they want to take the organization to the next level—open a school, create an endowment, construct a building, hire adequate staff, set productivity levels for board members, and other initiatives. The anniversary will be a platform for instituting growth.”

To achieve these goals, says associate and project manager Leea Nash, a team from Booz Allen worked with the dance company for 12 weeks to develop a strategic plan to strengthen key activities in the areas of fundraising, marketing, programming, board development, personnel and infrastructure, and space acquisition.

“Evidence has a visionary board with specific ideas on how the company should grow,” says associate Mirabelle Moreaux. “We helped them understand how to adopt best practices in the dance field. We interviewed industry experts, donors, and dance company executives to identify industry benchmarks, and developed recommendations to close gaps between those benchmarks and Evidence’s capabilities. We also produced a comprehensive implementation plan—a step-by-step manual of how to put the recommendations in place.”

The client found Booz Allen’s analytical expertise and its deep understanding of the market and customers—constituents that drive Evidence’s success—particularly valuable, says Van Lee. “Nonprofits can resist suggestions that seem too business oriented. But because the firm understands the external context, we could help Evidence see how certain business approaches would apply to their organization, and we built trust by working with them.”

Cycles have a lot to do with understanding an organization’s growth, Van Lee says. “The first stage is the founder’s cycle, where the organization could not survive without the direct involvement of the founder. The next is the institutional phase, where there’s still a connection to the founder but the organization develops a life of its own.

“Some organizations never get past the founder’s cycle,” he continues. “But they can’t grow and develop without going beyond those boundaries. Booz Allen helped Evidence build a plan and the milestones it needed to help it move into the institutional cycle.”

Brown is excited about the dance company’s future. “Each stage of the strategic plan has been extensive, but was presented in a way that was clear to us and not overwhelming,” he says. “We saw how objectives would be met, and this sense of ease and clarity directly affects how we achieve the goals for Evidence. Due to the contributions of Booz Allen, Evidence is able to move forward with informed decisions.”

Working Together to Manifest Opportunities

A desire to maintain its relevance and stay artistically fresh drove Evidence to seek Booz Allen’s help in developing an operational and strategic plan. “Because Evidence is an organization that relies primarily on donations and ticket sales for income, it was especially critical that the Booz Allen team develop concrete recommendations that would diversify funding and enable growth,” Nash says.

Evidence also wanted to increase dancer retention, create new work, and develop standard policies and procedures. Booz Allen’s recommendations will help the dance company achieve those objectives and more, including:

• Establishing a $25 million endowment to support building a dedicated space and launching a 5-year capital campaign by its 25th anniversary
• Increasing the size, scope, and strategic intent of the company’s tour and creating a new work every 2 years
• Building awareness of the Evidence brand and of its community and educational programs
• Determining options to attract and retain mature dancers
• Defining an ideal board structure, skills, and roles

Says Moreaux, “We developed tools and frameworks to formalize data collection and decision making within Evidence. This included a program evaluation tool they can use to track information that will support fundraising activities and marketing materials, an annual board appraisal evaluation tool, and a program/tour selection framework.”

Evidence is in the process of implementing many of the recommendations from the strategic plan. Some will produce significant changes from how the organization functioned in the past.

For example, strategic planning will be conducted every two years instead of on an ad-hoc basis. Fundraising activities will be targeted beyond galas and touring. Formerly an informal process, marketing efforts will now include consistent and tailored messaging to all stakeholders. There are plans to hire full-time development, marketing, and office administration staff as well as part-time finance personnel. Board development will also be addressed with a formal recruitment and retention plan and clear guidelines around roles and responsibilities.

Other changes include augmenting standard health benefits with differentiated options, and offering dancers mentoring, career coaching, and internal employment opportunities to develop skills they may need when they retire from dancing.

“Success will be measured by definitive goals,” Van Lee says. “We put metrics in place with the milestones.”

Booz Allen will provide troubleshooting services and oversight as needed through December 2008. “With the expertise of the dancers, dedication of the staff, oversight of the board, and Booz Allen’s continued support, Evidence is well on its way to achieving its long-term vision,” Nash says.

“It’s refreshing to work with artistic organizations that have a passion about their work,” Van Lee adds. “Evidence wanted to manifest its opportunities, and working together, we found a way to show how much better its work can be.”

story posted April 22, 2008