Just how successful IS your nonprofit in reaching all the audiences it believes could benefit from its offerings? Well, it probably comes as no surprise that the opera, even in Italy, its home of origin, isn't doing that well at attracting younger audiences - those who must fill the seats as the seniors pass-on. So, according to the Wall Street Journal, it is time for the opera to do something different. And one key, I will offer in taking this step, was recruiting at least one board member who actually was and understood the target audience. And here-in lies the lesson. A diverse board has far more capability of understanding audience that a board comprised of one or another demographic. But remember, one demographic alone does not diversity make.
Taking over last year as coordinator of the under-35 chapter of the Milano per la Scala foundation Valeria Mongillo looked for new ways to draw and keep younger members.
When she saw her first opera at La Scala in 2012 at the age of 24, she was so carried away by the music and the gilt-and-scarlet decor that she bought the Under30 pass. But she couldn’t find anyone to go with. “I had a hard time finding people my age who wanted to come,” she says. “Opera is not very well-known, and it’s expensive.”
Over the past year the youth chapter has grown to about a third of the foundation’s 600 members. The key, she says, is creating a clubby atmosphere with trips to see opera in other European capitals, meetings with the singers, and museum visits. “You need to create a group, or else they leave,” she says.
Ms. Mongillo, who also has a seat on the board, set up partnerships with local institutions including the Brera Fine Arts Academy. She created a coordinating committee of young people to brainstorm ideas about social events. And she sought tighter links with Juvenilia, a Europe-wide network for young opera lovers in which members take turns hosting events and travelling to them.