Start by looking at your existing or planned offering from the perspective of your patrons and fans. Their perceived value of the offering is key, and it can be enhanced in three main ways that you may find surprising.

First, be aware that most people would like to know what your art in general or a specific project means to you as an artist and why it is significant before they are ready to get engaged and connect with it. In other words, the better they understand your art, the more they are able to enjoy and appreciate it. People are also more open to donating if they are familiar with your art form, or share an interest in the subject matter and goals of your project. Therefore you create additional value if you communicate more information about your art to your patrons and fans in some form. This logic applies to the event itself, as well as to your promotional materials.

Second, keep in mind that people do not only come to experience your art for its own sake. In fact (and this may be hard for you to accept!), seeing your art is usually not the main driver for them to go out. Instead the prime motivation for many people is of a social nature. They see the arts as an opportunity to spend quality time with family and friends, celebrate a special occasion, mingle with an interesting crowd, feel some association or involvement with you and your organization, experience something new to talk about, etc. Therefore you should evaluate your offering and its setting in terms of its social appeal and your opportunities for connecting directly with your fans. A face-to-face conversation leading to a personal connection with the artist or another member of the organization, based on a shared value or interest, is also one of the main reasons why individuals respond to requests for a donation.

Third, put some thought into how you can meet your patrons’ needs further by offering them a degree of customization. Tailoring your offering to their interests results in a highly valued unique experience for them, which may even be personalized, and has the added advantage of allowing you to ask for a higher price. Enabling patrons to shape their own experience also leads to higher involvement and personal commitment on their end. This creates more potential for sales and donations, and turning people into passionate advocates of your art who will introduce it to their friends.

Note that not all your events have to be scheduled ones with a predetermined time and place. Consider offering tailor-made experiences that you craft around individual buyers’ preferences, like a performance or exhibition in their own home or at a conference, combined with an introductory speech and possibly a short Q&A session. Step up to new artistic challenges, and share the richness of your art in new ways!

When crafting your offerings, include ways of dealing with patrons’ interest in learning about your art, and take their social needs into account. Make your art and yourself more accessible to your patrons and fans, try to create a sense of affiliation, and explicitly provide value for social and special occasions.

You can achieve these goals by providing a more intimate and interactive setting. You may want to organize behind-the-scenes access or previews, pre- or post-show discussions, or offer a package that includes dinner or lunch (with or without artists). The venue could be particularly welcoming and comfortable or especially meaningful to your patrons. Have a look around for what other creative organizations have developed, and learn from their experiments. Augment your packages with relevant customization options and add-ons so that you offer truly unique and often personalized experiences.

Rather than developing a single broad offering based around your concept, create a portfolio of different versions with differentiated pricing and targeted messages that appeal to people’s range of motivations and means. Think about the types of people and groups that make up your customers, try to identify the characteristics of your main donors, and then figure out how you might cater to the preferences of those types of potential patrons. Your target markets may include e.g. individual existing fans, novices to your art form, groups with different types of social interests, families, aspiring artists and their relations, schools and universities, corporate customers and their agencies, all with various budgets.

One exercise a number of artists have found helpful is to set the price of your first new offering at $1000 (this gets you out of the habit of underpricing). Then design related offerings stepping down and also up from there. In order to get more ideas and check whether you got it right, discuss your plans with several people who represent your chosen target markets. An example portfolio is shown at the bottom of this page.

When you promote your offering, provide a specific description that invites people to envision the event that they will attend, as well as the enjoyment that they will get from the overall experience. Also highlight any social mission that it relates to, since shared interests and passions can be strong connection points with prospective patrons and donors. In addition, don’t forget to refer to outstanding reviews and to its scarcity – if the offering is only available for a small number of patrons, this can encourage potential buyers to make a purchase.

Make it easy for your patrons to explain the value of your art to others so that they will be happy to ask their friends to join them. The better you communicate the value of your offering to specific types of prospective buyers, the more easily you can convince them to associate with you, and spend their time and money on you.

From your perspective, as the artist who will deliver the new offering, you need to take the following important points into consideration:

• You need to enjoy what you are offering. If you are not at ease with the offering, it is likely to show that you have created a burden for yourself. That will in turn dampen your patrons’ enjoyment.
• The ratio of risk-adjusted costs and likely revenue needs to make sense. That means that you need to know your costs and constraints, and diligently work through some scenarios with different sales figures.
• Your resource situation needs to allow you to make it available without requiring a long lead time. In the case of a tailor-made setting, the offering also needs to be repeatable, even if you should not necessarily expect to sell it very often. In this way, the value of the time you spend on the conception of the offering can also be recouped more easily, since that effort will apply directly to future instances of the offering.

As long as these criteria are fulfilled, you should include any tailor-made offering that makes your portfolio more interesting and more appealing to a wider range of patrons. For scheduled events, of course, your assessment of resource constraints and the risks involved should be more careful, since a scheduled event represents a firm commitment on your part.

1. For Arts-Minded Individuals and Their Friends

• Show-hearsal – Sneak-Peak of Our Work-In-Progress
• Studio Showing – Sneak-Peak Low-Tech Performance with Q&A
• Through Our Eyes – Invite Us Along and Learn to See a Performance Like a Dancer
• Private Performance For Your Party, House or Social Get-Together
• Get Fit With Us – Workout with a Dancer
• Have Dance Questions? Get Answers in a Skype Session
• Let’s Do Lunch – Have an Informal Discussion with One of our Dancers in a Café

2. For Private Events

• Private Performance For Benefits, Galas or Fundraisers
• Private Performance for a Special Occasion
• Commission a Dance for an Occasion or Gift
• Commission a Flash Mob
• Host an Art Party

3. For Aspiring Artists and Students

• Shadow a Professional Dancer
• Hone Your Audition Materials – Get Our Feedback
• Get Coached by a Choreographer
• Have Dance Questions? Get Answers in a Skype Session

4. For Colleges, Universities and Schools

• Master Classes
• Lectures and Discussions
• Guest Choreography
• Workshops For Children
• Skype Visit to Your Class

5. For Conferences

• Private Performance
• Commission a Dance
• Commission a Flash Mob
• Workshop: Instant Decisions – Fast Creative Choices
• Talks And Presentations

Tip: Get more ideas on how to build out your portfolio from the ready-made blueprints for arts offerings on GoSeeDo.org

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