Operations

Subset of Management, refers specifically to logistics, insurance, etc.

Nonprofit leader, humor blogger, and truth-teller. It’s a unique job description, but a perfect fit for Vu Le. Le is the executive director of Seattle-based social justice organization Rainier Valley Corps and the author of NonprofitAF.com, a blog that mixes pop culture and pictures of baby animals with candid insight into the current state of nonprofits.

A community chorus is held together by its singers’ commitment to each other and to the group. But what happens when a volunteer singer becomes disruptive to that community spirit—and won’t comply with repeated requests to change their ways? Does your chorus have a carefully spelled-out dismissal procedure, or do you handle things on a case-by-case basis? Or are you sitting there crossing your fingers and hoping it won’t happen, because there is no precedent in recent memory?

Choosing the Right Software for Your Chorus

The right process can save your organization a lot of time and money as you select new software. But how do you get started?

Chorus America's annual survey of the operations of choruses, the Chorus Operations Survey Report includes more than 45 different analyses, from number of board meetings to board giving, from ticket pricing to chorus dues amounts, from accompanist pay practices to marketing efficiency. The 2016 report features data from the 2014-2015 season, as well as a new series on board terms and director term limits.

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One choral leader described setting a concert attire policy as “somewhere near getting a root canal.” Ouch! We asked choruses—and the choral apparel companies that clothe them—to give us their best advice for making the process as pain-free as possible. 

Whether your chorus has 10 singers or 110, what those singers wear matters. The overall look should complement, not distract from, the music and communicate a certain level of seriousness, or as one choral conductor quipped, “not like you just walked in off the street.” 

As a graduate conducting student at Temple University in the 1980s, Diana V. Saez recalls being frustrated that there was no mention of Latin American composers—except for the famous composers Villalobos from Brazil and Ginastera from Argentina. When she moved to Washington DC, in 1990, she found a bustling choral music scene, with a wide variety of choruses. But Latin American music was not part of the standard repertoire.

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