Run It Like a Business

How Do We Build Arts Organizations That Last? An evening with author and arts strategist Aubrey Bergauer In conversation with Cari Borja Art may begin with an idea. But what allows that idea to survive? For centuries, arts organizations have been among the places where a culture thinks out loud ~ where artists experiment, audiences encounter new ways of seeing, and ideas are translated from one generation to the next. But the organizations that make those encounters possible are themselves increasingly fragile. In Run It Like a Business: Strategies for Arts Organizations to Increase Audiences, Remain Relevant, and Multiply Money—Without Losing the Art, arts strategist Aubrey Bergauer challenges one of the most persistent assumptions of the nonprofit world: that mission and money somehow exist in opposition. What if running an arts organization more effectively didn't mean compromising the art, but actually made more art possible? Drawing lessons from customer experience, technology, company culture, audience development, subscriptions, branding, and new revenue models, Bergauer asks arts leaders to reconsider how cultural organizations attract audiences, welcome younger generations, build more inclusive institutions, generate revenue, and turn first-time visitors into people who return again and again. Bergauer joins anthropologist and Clio’s founding member Cari Borja ~ a fashion designer, entrepreneur, and longtime participant in the worlds of arts and nonprofit organizations, for a conversation that goes beyond the traditional divide between art and business. Together, they will ask what it takes to build cultural institutions that can endure without losing the ideas that made them worth building in the first place. Because perhaps the question isn't whether art should be run like a business. The more interesting question is: How do we build the structures that allow art and the ideas carried through it ~ to survive? And in difficult times, how do we make sure the institutions entrusted with those ideas are still here for the next generation? Aubrey Bergauer is an arts leader, strategist, and author known for rethinking how performing arts organizations build audiences, generate revenue, and remain relevant without compromising the art. As chief executive of the California Symphony, she doubled its audience and nearly quadrupled its donor base, and her career has included work with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and hundreds of arts organizations through her Changing the Narrative initiative. Described by the Observer as “the Steve Jobs of classical music,” Bergauer brings a data-informed, audience-centered approach to the future of cultural institutions. Her debut book, Run It Like a Business, was published in 2024.