Measuring the Diversity of Arts and Entertainment Venue Managers: A Longitudinal Demography- (RPA Pilot/ Seed Project)

"This pilot project will develop a prototype of a longitudinal demographic study of a nonprofit
professional association using the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) as a case study to measure progress toward achieving the goal of being a more inclusive association. Many organizations have goals of diversifying their staff, leadership, and offerings, and like IAVM, have installed task forces, working groups, and diversity officers. However, without an effective monitoring mechanism in place to measure progress toward achieving the goal of being a more inclusive association it is unknown if their efforts and interventions have been successful. This lack of reliable, comparative data can result in failing targets as well as wasting resources pursuing ineffective strategies. To fill this gap, the proposed longitudinal study will track the demographic changes of IAVM’s membership over time, providing an answer to the key question: How can arts and cultural industries monitor the progress of interventions toward and enhance the goal of becoming more diverse and inclusive? Using IAVM as a case study, the first task of the study will be survey development and baseline data collection, followed by the task of triennial, empirical data collection to track progress or stagnation. This survey instrument will be an effective method for membership organizations to not only learn about the ethnic, racial, gender, belief, ability, and age characteristics of its membership, but will also enable it to (1) identify areas of disparity; (2) implement strategies to ameliorate them; (3) track changes in its membership over time; and (4) predict demographic trends in its industry. This survey instrument can be adapted by other nonprofit member-based associations in the arts and cultural industry to track the progress of and attain true diversity of ideas and experiences to fully support their communities."