Nonprofit Organizations, Community, and Shared Urgency: Lessons from the Arts and Culture Sector

Abstract

Mainstream arts management and stakeholder research highlights the relationships between nonprofit organizations and community, yet empirical research on how those interactions result in outcomes is limited. This article looks at the stakeholder attribute “urgency” and the impact on and by the stakeholder group “community.” Building on a comparative case study of five cultural organizations and their capital intensive facility projects, our research finds that both new and existing organizations embrace a community-wide process whereby internal and external stakeholders are identified, relationships nurtured, social and emotional bonds strengthened, and shared urgency between community and organization is created towards specific outcomes.

Keywords:

• arts and culture
• community
• nonprofit organizations
• stakeholders
• urgency

INTRODUCTION

This article focuses on the connection between the stakeholder attribute “urgency” and the stakeholder group “community” in nonprofit arts and culture organization management. In broad terms, community in the arts, stakeholder management, and social research have various definitions. We therefore frame a working definition of community while centering on the various aspects between organization and community embedded in the general urgency attribute and, more specifically, how a sense of urgency evolves through these interactions. As limited research has been done on community and shared urgency related to the major strategic initiatives of nonprofit cultural organizations, our research integrates both managerial and sociological perspectives. The goal is to look at how nonprofit cultural organizations create a sense of shared urgency with and in community to generate specific outcomes.

We collect and analyze data on community and organization stakeholder interactions in a retrospective, comparative case study of five nonprofit arts and culture organizations, both new and existing, and their capital-intensive facility projects. We find that all five organizations embrace a community-wide process whereby internal and external stakeholders are identified, relationships nurtured, social and emotional bonds established and strengthened, and shared urgency is created in and by community to support specific organizational goals. Sociomateriality, sensemaking, and power (Balogun, et al. 2014) evolve as organizations examine business and operating models of their facility projects, create public and private dialogue in the communities in which they exist, influence or are influenced by that dialogue, and seek to achieve a balance for how a project can best serve the needs of, and generate support from, community.

The research contributes to the arts management, stakeholder, and sociological literature by demonstrating how nonprofit cultural organizations create a sense of shared urgency in and with their communities. Material and cognitive connections are made to a project and the people involved in it, commitment to one or both of these occurs, and the capacity (e.g. financial, emotional, intellectual) of a community is leveraged to create a sense of shared urgency in realizing nonprofit cultural organization goals. The research is motivated by numerous cultural organizations that identify a need for new, renovated, or restored facilities in concept, yet face significant challenges in aligning stakeholders to achieve intended outcomes. This study contributes lessons for cultural organizations on how best to engage community stakeholders in a process that results in support for and shared urgency in the planning and development required to achieve the grand opening of cultural facilities.

STAKEHOLDERS, THE ARTS, AND COMMUNITY

Stakeholder, arts management, and community research each highlight different yet complementary perspectives on community with limited study on the urgency attribute. We briefly provide an overview of these three research areas and illuminate the urgency attribute.

In the management literature, stakeholders comprise “any person, group or organization that can place a claim on an organization's attention, resources or output, or is affected by that output” (Freeman 1984, 45), including groups of “customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and financiers” (Freeman, Harrison, et al. 2010, 9) and the value creation that occurs from the interaction between stakeholders and a business enterprise (2010, 24). In stakeholder theory, “communities” are defined under the four broad contexts of community of place, community of interest, virtual advocacy groups, and communities of practice (Dunham, Freeman, and Liedtka 2006) with three specific strategies in approaching each—cooperation, collaboration, and containment (38). Based on the three stakeholder attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency and the combination thereof, seven interrelated classes of stakeholders are identified (Mitchell, Agle, and Wood 1997). In arts management literature, however, community can mean the collective group of individuals, organizations, and agencies that produce, present, and promote artistic endeavors or those in a community who attend or otherwise support those endeavors (McClellan, Rebello-Rao, and Wyszomirski 1999). From a sociological perspective, community is viewed as both a responsibility and resource (Nowell and Boyd 2010) where spirit, trust, trade, and art are seen as the core elements of having a sense of community (McMillan 1996) and barriers mark who does and doesn't belong, symbols denote membership, and behavior is influenced by community norms (McMillan 2011).

Due to both the complexities and nuances of these definitions of community, and recognizing that internal organizational stakeholders have personal and professional connections that are necessary for successful project outcomes, our research defines community as stakeholders who share a community of place, of interest, and of practice (Dunham et al. 2006) with the sense of community (McMillan 1996) as a responsibility and resource (Nowell and Boyd 2010) operating in the arts and culture sector (McClellan et al. 1999).

Managerial stakeholder research largely concentrates on for-profit corporations (Fassin 2009; Freeman et al. 2010, 30-45; Laplume, Sonpar, et al. 2008; Slinger 1999) and far outweighs nonprofit and public sector research (Laplume et al. 2008) with a limited amount in the arts and culture sector. The stakeholder literature has stressed multi-actor relationships and characterized both stakeholders and firms as independent actors with stakeholder classes depicted by their relative saliency as a function of power, legitimacy, and urgency attributes that influence an organization's economic interests with the latter attribute on the immediacy that stakeholder claims need attention (Mitchell et al. 1997). In order to better understand these attributes, we focused on the specific “community” stakeholder group by reviewing journal articles through systematic research. We paired “shared” (and associated synonyms) and “community” (as well as individual, group, and institutional terms) with each stakeholder attribute to look at the intersection of these terms in the literature. We found that scholarly and peer-reviewed journal articles within business and management research utilizing the combination of these terms are heavily weighted towards stakeholder power (86%) and legitimacy (12%) with less than 2% on community and shared urgency (Appendix A). We then considered nonprofit organizations and their capital-intensive facility projects and how urgency unfolds through interaction with community stakeholders.

With no articles appearing on “stakeholders” and “community urgency,” we recognized the limited nature of research in this area and shifted our attention to contributions related to “shared” and “group” urgency. Of the resulting six articles, three included “stakeholders” and “shared urgency” and address internal organizational dynamics and common language among employee stakeholders (Griffin 2008), the supply of and demand for business education regarding the interdependence of business necessities within broader societal interests (Gentile 2001), and unexpected boundary issues in urban planning (Verweij, Van Meekerk, Koppenjan, and Geerlings 2014). Of these three, the latter is similar to the microcosm of cultural facility planning in a metropolitan area, indicating the need to invest in building capacity to address boundary issues and to develop coping strategies in capital-intensive urban planning projects with focus on public-private partnerships (20). It references the concept of a shared sense of urgency through government intervention in an infrastructure project, but its findings do not focus on the topic from the nonprofit organization or the arts and culture sector perspectives.

The article that includes “stakeholders” and “common urgency” focuses on business ethics while embracing the value of profit in corporations (Primeaux 1997), while the article that includes “stakeholders” and “collective urgency” looks at collaborative governance in the health services sector in the Southeastern US (Agbodzakey 2012). Similar to cultural facility planning and development, the latter article highlights the importance of shared understanding of the problem in achieving a collaborative approach which manifests collective urgency towards ensuing actions (114). Finally, the article that includes “stakeholders” and “group urgency” highlights effective Guanxi (interpersonal connections) in hierarchical stakeholder models in China (Su, Mitchell, and Sirgy 2007). In this instance, criticality and timing of guanxi exist where urgency motivates management to determine the hierarchy of stakeholder relationships (313). None of these six articles, however, focuses on long-term interactions between US nonprofit cultural organizations, community, and urgency. We were therefore motivated to explore how these organizations, which have stated urgency for their projects, interact with community to achieve a shared commitment to and urgency for the desired outcomes.

Arts and cultural management research over the past 25 years has focused primarily on marketing, consumer behavior, management, finance, cultural policy, human resources, technology, and a broad array of “other topics,” including cultural tourism, educational programs, and social issues (Perez-Cabanero and Cuadrado-Garcia 2011). These other topics accounted for 7.5% of the total research associated with the first 10 International Association of Arts and Cultural Management (AIMAC) conferences between 1991 and 2009, and we therefore sought to add to the social issues research. Additional research, specifically on cultural facilities, has focused on economic and demographic factors related to investing in cultural facility development (Woronkowicz 2013); assessing and responding to the renovation, expansion, and creation of new visual and performing arts facilities (Rosewall 2006); and theoretical approaches to evaluating the demand for arts centers (Radbourne 2001). None of these, however, are centered on the stakeholder influence of or on community and the urgency surrounding the planning and development of cultural facilities.

Social issues in the complex multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary areas of arts management theory and research have evolved beyond economic discussions as collective organizational and individual identities are connected to and embedded in the impact of the arts on society (Kirchberg and Zembylas 2010). Empirical research on the psychological sense of community—with its four primary elements of spirit, trust, trade, and art—demonstrates the resources that “community” can provide and the responsibilities of those stakeholder communities (i.e., McMillan 1996; Chavis, Hogge, McMillan, and Wandersman 1986; Nowell and Boyd 2010). In this instance, art “represents the transcendent values of the community, but the basic foundation of art is experience” and “to have experience, the community's members must have contact with one another… for sense of community to develop” (McMillan 1996, 322). Centered in the community psychology literature, however, this research does not address the arts or management aspects related to the community-organization relationship, interaction, and influence that one has on the other.

With limited integration of the stakeholder, arts management, and community research referenced earlier, we seek to deepen and broaden the literature by focusing on how shared urgency is created between organizations and community. We therefore address the following research question: In what ways do nonprofit cultural organizations create a sense of shared urgency with community as they pursue capital-intensive facility projects?

METHODS, DATA, AND ANALYSIS

We addressed the research question underlying this article in the context of a larger research project on stakeholder interactions in cultural facility projects, embracing a comparative, retrospective case study approach (Yin 2003; Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007) researching five nonprofit cultural organizations located in the US that planned, developed, and opened capital-intensive cultural facility projects between 2000 and 2010. This research design allowed us to portray the idiosyncrasies of each organization, generalize results through the identification and analysis of cross-case patterns, demonstrate community-organization interactions, and consider inflection points that create shared urgency between the two.

Case Selection

We chose five nonprofit cultural organizations in a range of community sizes but all within larger US Census 2010 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) in the Northeastern US for comparability purposes. As cultural facility projects can sometimes be decades in the making and never come to fruition, the researchers determined that the most appropriate approach would be to focus on the fluidity of the people, processes, and communities in which the cultural facilities were planned and developed that culminated in a grand opening. We therefore selected these cases from an initial list of over 200 cultural facility grants awarded by one government agency between 2007 and 2009 to multi-disciplinary arts and culture organizations. Each of these organizations obtained one or more cultural facility capital financing seed grant(s) from the government agency which required at least a matching amount of funds from additional private sources. We selected from these to ensure that the majority of funds were primarily from an array of private (i.e., individual, corporate, foundation) sources contributed to the nonprofit organization rather than from public (i.e., government) sources. Striving for maximum variety, we included both established organizations and startups whose facilities had grand openings between 2006 and 2010, which limited the research population to about 25 organizations. Approximately 15 were invited to participate in the study based on size (i.e., larger than $3 million), scale, and geographic location, with seven initially agreeing to participate and five subsequently providing sufficient researcher access. Facility project concept exploration timelines began around 2000 in all five cases, groundbreaking between 2006 and 2009, and grand opening to the public between 2006 and 2010, ensuring comparable external conditions for all five cases. The case study organizations included two new and three existing nonprofit cultural organizations, names masked for anonymity, which are described below. All are in communities that are in similar urban MSAs but with an array of disparate socioeconomic and demographic factors locally, and with varied project components, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1 Summary of Case Studies

	Cinema	Center	Festival	Theater	Institute
COMMUNITY DEMOGRAPHICS
Metropolitan Community Size*	2	2	1	3	1
Town/City Demographics**
Town/City Population (Approx.)	40,000	175,000	7,500	3,000	625,000
Median Age	22	33	51	54	31
Age 65+	7%	12%	23%	27%	10%
Owner-Occupied Housing	46%	45%	67%	80%	34%
Race Caucasian	77%	69%	97%	97%	54%
Bachelor degree or higher (age 25+)	71%	30%	52%	62%	43%
Household Income > $150K	15%	6%	18%	19%	12%
Household Income Median	$52,281	$46,846	$71,447	$59,234	$51,739
Household Income Mean	$83,884	$60,926	$98,858	$83,314	$78,125
Mgmt., Science, Arts Occupations (age 16+)	47%	34%	52%	42%	46%
Arts, Entertainment, Recr. Industry (age 16+)	11%	8%	10%	18%	11%
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Concept Phase Begins	1999	2000	1999	2000	2000
Groundbreaking	2006	2006	2009	2006	2009
Grand Opening	2006	2008	2010	2007	2010
Land/Facility Acquisition	Purchase 2001; Sold 2005; Repurchase 2008	Donated to nonprofit 2002	Purchase 2006	Purchase 2005	Owned facility; Purchase adjacent land 2006
Estimated Total Project Cost	$3M	$31M	$20M	$6M	$32M
Approx. Square Footage	10,640	66,000	17,300	17,000	47,000
Approx. Venue Seating Capacity	278	2,300	330	210	340

*U.S. Department of Agriculture 2013 Rural-Urban Continuum Codes: 1 = Counties in metro areas of 1 million+ population; 2 = Counties in metro areas of 250,000 to 1 million population; 3 = Counties in metro areas of fewer than 250,000 population.**Source: American Community Survey 2007–2011.

Community Art Cinema (“Cinema”) was an organization originally established informally by a group of community members who were interested in purchasing and renovating a previously closed, single-screen art cinema building to create an arts center in the heart of downtown. They created a nonprofit organization, purchased the building, sold it, repurchased it, and over several years built internal stakeholder consensus to develop a multi-screen cinema arts center, and later, with external consensus, to include office and retail space. Cinema is located in a relatively small city whose primary industries are higher education, healthcare, and government, and it has the youngest median age (22), yet most highly educated demographic (71% age 25+ with Bachelor's degree), of the five case studies.

Small City Performing Arts Center (“Center”) accepted a corporate donation of an idle commercial cineplex structure, which precipitated the formation of its nonprofit entity, in a medium-sized industrial city. Center renovated and historically restored the structure to create a multi-disciplinary performing arts center aimed at presenting and promoting regional and national programming, including performing artists, touring Broadway productions, and educational activities. Center has the lowest percentage of households that earn in excess of $150,000 (6%) and the lowest percentage with a four-year college education (30% age 25+ with Bachelor's degree) of the five cases.

Town Music Festival (“Festival”) progressed from a seasonal organization using facilities rented from another cultural entity to one that bought an oceanside building, demolished it, built a new structure on the site, and established a year-round performing arts venue that it owns and operates. Festival produces its traditional seasonal festival and now presents multi-disciplinary cultural events, including pop, folk, jazz, world music, cinema, and live high-definition (HD) opera broadcasts in a small town. Festival has the greatest percentage of its community working in management, science, and the arts (52%) of the five cases.

Village Theater Company (“Theater”) started as a summer avant-garde theater producer leasing a beachside venue and later purchased land, constructed a building, and now operates a facility on a main highway where its core program is complemented by live HD opera and theater broadcasts, as well as other performing arts events throughout the year. Theater's facility is now periodically used by other community organizations through rental agreements to fill capacity, meet demand, and increase revenue. Theater has the oldest demographic (27% age 65+ with median age of 54) and greatest percentage earning over $150,000 (19%) of the five cases.

Big City Arts Institute (“Institute”), a long-standing nonprofit performing arts higher-education organization, purchased a parcel of land, expanded, and then renovated its existing theater, music, and dance rehearsal and performance facilities in a major US city. Institute is located in the most ethnically diverse community (46% non-Caucasian) with the largest city population (approximately 625,000) of the five cases.

Data Collection

Semi-structured interviews involved 19 key stakeholders from the five organizations who were at the boundary between organization and community, serving in multiple stakeholder roles (Table 2), and held the deepest firsthand knowledge of the projects, associated timelines, budgets, financing, and community involvement. In gathering data, the interviewer asked respondents about their specific roles in the organization and project, the project timeline, and stakeholder involvement during three key points in the organizations’ cultural facility projects: (1) the concept stage, when regular management and Board discussions and decisions occurred; (2) the planning stage, when the organization started to invest time and financial resources into testing the concept to determine technical, programming, and organizational facility needs; and (3) the implementation stage, when construction started (i.e., the groundbreaking) through to the project completion date (i.e., the public grand opening). The Stakeholder Interview Guide is provided in Appendix B. Interviews lasted 45 to 75 minutes, and were recorded, transcribed, reviewed, and amended by the interviewer. Organizational websites, associated news articles, and additional public data about the community and project, as well as informant-provided information (i.e., facility planning studies, drawings, pictures, videos, government grant applications, financial statements, tax records), were collected and reviewed to provide broad organizational knowledge and community context for the study.

Table 2 Overview of Interviewees

Cinema	Center	Festival	Theater	Institute
Executive Director, Donor, former Board President	Executive Director	Board Chair, Donor	Artistic Director	President, Donor
Property Developer, Financier, Donor, Childhood Friend of Founding Board President	Financier (Real Estate)	Board Treasurer, Donor	Architect	Financier (Banking)
Legislator	Architect, Donor, Childhood friend of Founder	Board Member, Donor	Executive Director	Board Chair, Donor
Board Officer, Donor	Founder, Financier, Board Officer, Donor	Architect		Facilities Consultant

Data Analysis

Data analysis proceeded in three steps. First, we developed project timelines for each case study based on data collected from respondents and public sources and then sent the timelines to interviewees for correction, comment, and clarification. Second, we followed a temporal bracketing approach (Langley 1999) to identify project stages: pre-concept (for the three existing organizations), concept (for all five projects), groundbreaking, public grand opening, and post-opening. Third, we used NVivo 9.0 qualitative data analysis software to inductively code the interview transcripts, resulting in 664 first-order concepts, which were subsequently developed into more theoretically based second-order themes. Community-related qualitative analytical codes from the original 664 were the antecedents to the development of our final first-order themes, second-order concepts, and third-order aggregate dimensions (Gioia, Corley, and Hamilton 2013). These codes were attributed to areas such as community interest, support, engagement, need, response, expectations, impact, redevelopment, outreach, and other terms which primarily focused on stakeholder and organization-community interactions. Three aggregate dimensions were identified, including core group alignment, stakeholder alignment, and emotional and social bonds. The findings presented in the following focus on the aggregate dimension of community-related emotional and social bonds in the five projects, and Figure 1 represents our data structure solely on this dimension.

Figure 1 Data structure: Community-Organization concepts, themes, and dimensions.

FINDINGS

As we considered the ways in which nonprofit cultural organizations create a sense of shared urgency with community as they pursue capital-intensive facility projects, we focused on the connections to and commitment of people involved in the organizations and projects, as well as their connections to a specific geographic community and project location (i.e., place). Across the five cases, regardless of community demographics referenced earlier, emotional and social bonds between organization and community include admiration for and trust in a person and organization and sentimentality for or interest in a specific project, place, or organization. These emotional and social bonds are therefore represented in terms of connection to and commitment of people to place in and for a community.

The due diligence process, including assessing program, facility, market, and financing capabilities surrounding the organizational project needs and intended community outcomes, varied between cases. One hired an architect and fundraiser as the first steps (Theater), while the others determined year-round program needs with volunteer architectural and financing advice during the initial stages (Center, Cinema), and others hired an architect, did the program plan, and performed financing/fundraising feasibility studies simultaneously (Festival, Institute). In all cases, we found that shared urgency, as defined through respondent comments, videos, and news releases, emanates between community and organization when material and cognitive components are embedded in the emotional and social bonds of stakeholders through their connection and commitment to one another. Our findings therefore focus on connections to and commitment of people, and the connections to place, inherent in the nonprofit arts and culture project organizations and their community interactions.

Connections to and Commitment of People

In the second-order theme related to connections to and commitment of people, several examples provide context in the findings. In the two new nonprofit cultural organizations (Cinema and Center), emotional and social bonds played a central role as each lacked organizational legitimacy and historical perspective. At Cinema, for example, its cofounder Board Chair was one of the initial volunteer project champions who activated community members, including the chief financier with whom she had a childhood connection (i.e., both had grown up, attended secondary school, and lived in the town for many years), around the idea of a multi-disciplinary arts center. Several years after purchasing the building, however, Cinema had little consensus about the programmatic direction, lacked clarity on the significant financial needs to support the capital-intensive project, and had no valid plan for how best to advance from community dialogue to public action. Board leadership changed as the Board, from within its ranks, selected a new Chair, who then aligned the internal core group stakeholders to research, design, and develop an organizational policy regarding a programmatic focus on the art cinema genre. This evolution caused several founding community Board members in favor of the initial multi-disciplinary concept to leave the Cinema Board. The new Chair, however, was able to then communicate directly with the primary financier and built community confidence by publicly stating project and organizational intentions. This approach became essential to overall organizational messaging and the community's economic and non-economic support.

Cinema's former Board President (Executive Director on the interview date) addressed the circumstances of the building, owned for four years by Cinema but without financing to advance facility development, and the ensuing community-organizational connection to and commitment of people and place as follows:

We couldn't have done what we did without [the financier/property developer/donor], because he was there… to buy the building back… and once we had the money to buy it back from him, that he would sell it back to us at cost. And he also agreed to construct the cinema for us at cost. And the construction was only going to happen if we could borrow money, which he helped us do. Now he's a very unselfish person, in my view, is a very, very civic-minded person. He does have real estate in [the town], and so seeing [the town] do well benefits him economically, but he didn't have to do any of those things.

Cinema former Board President/current Executive Director (08/28/12 interview)

Emotional and social bonds between people, organization, and community amplified the concept of shared urgency beyond the financial needs highlighted earlier as Cinema embraced a strategy of “house parties” to have more personal dialogue with community stakeholders:

…[A] lot of connections were made without asks, which I think is important. For a thing like this, you really do have to build support… it doesn't necessarily work to just do things by the book, but you have to do what you’re good at and with personal contact.

Cinema Board Officer/Donor (11/14/12 interview)

The three existing organizations, on the other hand, had established organizational legitimacy and depended slightly less on emotional and social bonds. All three understood, however, that community dialogue was a consensus-building tool for ongoing stewardship between community and organizational stakeholders mutually focused on project outcomes. Institute's Board, for example, was made up of donors, alumni, audiences, and community members, and they became much more emotionally connected to the idea of a new facility after Institute's President presented a report identifying urgent facility needs. The Board had cognitively understood that renovated or new facilities were required, but the report, later combined with an architect's visual cues, piqued interest and inspired a sense of shared urgency after several years of project discussions between Board and management about how best Institute could serve its community with a new cultural facility.

And we produced what I hoped was a pretty well quantified… report on facilities, which was meant to be a call to action to the Board. A statement of the urgency of the need and the magnitude of the issue, that [Institute] could not thrive without serious attention to facilities. Now mind you it took six years to get it done following that.

Institute President (10/06/11 interview)

Institute's financiers, including influential foundation and individual donors, also helped create a sense of shared urgency within the community with multi-million-dollar financial challenge grants that included both time and money limitations.

The [Foundation] challenge brings new urgency and incentive to the timely completion of the [individual donor] challenge, as well as to [Institute's] expanding major gifts program. Although it won't be easy, these challenges give our campaign an extraordinary shot of energy, something we know we can leverage in this difficult economic environment.

Institute President (08/31/09 news release)

Big City Mayor also provided a key testimonial with a videotaped speech at the grand opening, similar to one that he delivered at groundbreaking, in support of the renovated facility concept. It included inspirational, humorous, and personal messages about his experiences at Institute and its longevity in Big City, as well as the importance of Institute and its cultural facilities project on Big City. Perspectives on Institute's reach into community advanced the significant capital project, and its impacts were demonstrated in comments about what's “good for the students,” and “good for the community.”

“My wife and I have come to the theater several times… it was 99 degrees… my God, it was terrible. And now we’re air-conditioned! This $32 million project has made [Institute] even better for the students, facility, and the entire City. I love this place… you make sure that arts are accessible to all our residents. This new performance and rehearsal space… raises the bar even higher… as a landmark in a city rich with history. What it's going to add to the cultural community of [Big City]… is growing and growing. This is all about the kids and how we give them the opportunity for a well-rounded education.

Big City Mayor (10/15/10 video)

Overall, these types of connections to and commitment of a broad array of people generated a sense of shared urgency in the community for the organization and their cultural facility projects. At times, the urgency was driven by internal leadership decisions, whereas at other moments external community forces intervened on behalf of the organizations to inspire greater community involvement, financial support, and emotional commitment towards mutually beneficial community outcomes.

Connections to Place

In the second-order theme related to connections to place, interviewees regularly commented on issues surrounding perceived economic, social, educational, tradition, prestige, or cultural benefits. At Center, for example, one of the new nonprofit cultural organizations, the connection to place was exemplified by the architect, who grew up in the community and was a childhood friend of the founder:

To go to this place and to enter this building during the Depression… [was] almost like taking a vacation. You would walk in and you’re rejuvenated and you already feel like royalty entering this spectacular auditorium. You can stage a performance or show a film. You don't need all of this because lights go down, you could be in a barn for all you know. It was all part of the whole experience…. I would say look what this [facility] effort in [Small City] means to the community. It has elevated the spirit of everyone who lives here. It's a regional attraction. It's an economic engine. It does all these great things for the City… where I would never have dreamed that people would come… from this entire… area for performances and do so much for us.

Center architect and childhood friend of Founder (12/13/12 interview)

Another example of the importance of “place” is demonstrated by Festival, an existing organization that identified a historic building in the center of its namesake town's primary business district. In this context, place combines the destination with how the organization interacted with those surrounding that specific location to create a vision for, and confidence in, both the organization and the future cultural facility.

We used professionals who knew about historic preservation in order to please the historic district commission. We paused construction… because we had an agreement with the town during the tourist season. We made a faux piano on a slab during that summer, so that people could tour that site, and we could show them the design.

Festival Board Chair (02/17/12 interview)

The juxtaposition of place at Festival, however, also created hurdles which needed to be overcome in creating community support for the project to advance. With an abutting neighbor seeking to block the building project, the Board Chair further illuminated the situation:

We also decided to fight [the abutter] with a lawsuit and put pressure on a town bylaws change to create a cultural overlay district.… It was zoned as commercial and needed a special permit. We offered [the abutter] money, but he wouldn't accept…. We ended up buying that house [after one year of litigation]… on the Saturday morning of when the town meeting was happening to decide on the cultural overlay district.… The newspaper editor fell for the [abutter] story… and told people to vote against. There were 300 people at the town meeting that day but ultimately the vote was not needed, as we withdrew the cultural overlay district proposal. We had an anonymous donor help us buy the [abutter] house.

Festival Board Chair (02/17/12 interview)

In some instances, the combination of people and place were interconnected, which had negative effects on advancing the facility project. At Theater, for example, some of the volunteers on the town zoning board publicly stated their intentions to delay the project:

Also, there were people on the board who had axes to grind. There was a guy on the board… who had a feud with [owner of the property Theater sought to purchase]. [Owner] had put him out of business over the [property location]. He was quoted. We even had affidavits, letters, asking that he recuse himself, because he had said publicly, “they’ll put up a theater over my dead body.”

Theater Artistic Director (11/14/12 interview)

Overall, in all cases, the commitment of people, and their connections to people and place, allowed the projects to advance regardless of organization age, lifecycle, community size, demographics, or project cost. On the other hand, legal and regulatory hurdles, sometimes based in interpersonal animosity rather than policy, were the impeding factors that were ameliorated through emotional, social, and financial means. Theater, for example, sought a regional regulatory agency's professional knowledge and an independent report that influenced the local town zoning board. The new organizations (Cinema, Center) demonstrated an equal if not greater capacity to ensure that their organizations were created with credible internal stakeholders, so that their and project outcomes could be achieved. All organizations faced environmental shocks during the first decade of the twenty-first century, which included the economic recessions subsequent to September 2001 and October 2008, as well as ongoing emotional waves of advocates and detractors as their projects unfolded. Connections to and commitment of people and connections to place within a community played a key role in advancing community-organizational goals with a sense of shared urgency to overcome hurdles and achieve goals in all of the nonprofit cultural organization projects.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

As highlighted by our findings, building a sense of shared urgency with community can take one of two paths—connection to and commitment of people and connection to place—which can be closely interrelated. In this section, we further develop insights into the ways in which nonprofit cultural organizations create a sense of shared urgency with community as they pursue capital-intensive facility projects. We present our discussion by providing an overview and then looking at how our research complements, amplifies, and speaks to the stakeholder, arts management, and community literature.

The impacts of and on community in both new and existing organizations were manifested through stakeholders’ words, legitimate actions, and sense of shared urgency for those interactions as each capital-intensive facility project built momentum from concept stage to grand opening, even during times of environmental shock. Cinema and Center, for example, developed new organizations, markets, programs, and business models from scratch; Festival and Theater originally consisted of seasonal business models in single artistic disciplines yet evolved into year-round, multi-discipline operations; and Institute's external stakeholder experts persuaded internal stakeholders to reach counterintuitive conclusions about their capital-intensive facility renovation versus relocation. Each organization engaged its community in dialogue, explored its options, and flexibly adapted to new information as they simultaneously deepened emotional and social community bonds.

The importance of specific people involved in the cultural organizations and their projects was stated in various ways by respondent interviewees that generated the second-order theme of connections to and commitment of people. Their connections to community, one another, the organization, and commitment to the organizational project, people, and programs were overarching in all case studies. Multiple references were made to the importance of specific knowledge and experience of core team members, external stakeholder influences on the people and project, and the roles of an array of individuals involved in both economic and non-economic advancement of the cultural facility projects. Respondents regularly commented on issues related to caring about the people involved in an organization; how a project would help advance its mission; the history and connection to the people involved in the organization, project, or community; and the commitment to personal and professional relationships between people.

Our findings indicate that stakeholders’ cognitive, material, and emotional connection and commitment to an organization's people, projects, and community are in correlation to their sense of shared urgency to invest their time, talent, and treasure (Amit, Glosten, et al. 1993) at their capacity to reach legitimized outcomes. Nonprofit cultural organization interactions with community generate desired outcomes, regardless of demographic differences, as these organizations undertake capital-intensive projects. Material and cognitive processes were intermingled into mutually supportive and distinctive instrumental, descriptive, and normative elements. Project and organizational leadership, interwoven with shared understanding and sensemaking, precipitated core group alignment as the antecedent to development and mobilization of external connections to and stakeholder alignment with community. Shared sensemaking and urgency occurred by integrating stakeholder feedback, which manifested wider and broader community engagement for and with the nonprofit cultural organizations and their projects. Emotional and social community bonds to people, place, and organizations were a fundamental influence on the core group in achieving community stakeholder alignment and shared urgency.

Stakeholders

Our research affirms stakeholder theory and practice research on community—of place, of interest, and of practice (Dunham, Freeman, and Liedtka 2006). Virtual advocacy groups with an oppositional sense of identity (33), however, are nonexistent in our research, although individual advocates and detractors were evident. Dunham, Freeman, and Liedtka's focus on dangerous stakeholder communities is valid, but the definition of community in the stakeholder literature would appear to be moderated by our research in that they do not have to be “virtual” or “advocacy groups,” as not all business entities, either for-profit or nonprofit, necessarily encounter these influences. We also recognize that understanding stakeholder connection and commitment are the precursors to determining specific cooperation, collaboration, and containment strategies (Dunham et al. 2006, 38) in the context of the capacity of a stakeholder community to support or detract from an organizational strategic initiative and the mutually beneficial outcomes created by a sense of shared urgency.

Our research indicates that core group leaders in both existing and new organizations had to dialogue with various internal and external stakeholders, regardless of their initial inclinations about prevailing saliency (Mitchell et al. 1997). Stakeholder saliency wasn't known to core group leaders, especially in new organizations, until each undertook preliminary steps to perform due diligence and establish emotional and social connections to familiar and unfamiliar stakeholders as the antecedent to understanding stakeholder commitment to the organization and stakeholder capacity to support the cultural organizations’ projects. Community groups with network power and resources (Pujunen 2006) were necessary in advancing the projects within the context of organizational goals. Community interactions, and the shared urgency created through emotional and social bonds, are evident as stakeholders—namely employees and suppliers (whether volunteer or paid), customers (attendees, students/parents, etc.), and financiers (lenders and donors)—became part of the cognitive, material, social, and emotional processes for these nonprofit cultural organizations and their projects.

The two new organizations, for example, had to assess the market for their intended programs, establish communications with a potential customer base for their services and facilities, develop relationships through the core group and other internally aligned stakeholders, and depend more on community volunteers instead of employees to achieve project outcomes. Shared community-organizational urgency at the new organizations was equal to or exceeded that of existing organizations that were in more mature stages of the organizational business cycle. This finding moderates research that indicates stakeholder salience and interest are closely tied to organizational lifecycle stage (Jawahar and McLaughlin 2001), as stakeholder salience appeared relational (i.e., a function of personal connection and commitment) rather than transactional (i.e., related to stakeholder power or legitimacy), regardless of organizational lifecycle. Shared urgency therefore manifested itself as a key stakeholder attribute in ensuring that community was a definitive stakeholder class (i.e., had power, legitimacy, and urgency) and a salient stakeholder (Mitchell, Agle, et al. 1997).

Our research indicates that longstanding or larger organizations had little advantage over the newer or smaller ones, particularly when we considered core group and external stakeholder actions and responses. Organizational age, affective congruence, cognitive legitimacy, reliability, strategic flexibility, and accountability moderates prior research by Choi and Shepard (2005) in this area. The community and financiers tended to quantify their capacity to support the organizations’ projects based on their personal connection and commitment to, and the credibility of, the people leading those projects and organizations. The two new organizations had to raise awareness, willingness, and capability of their projects and organizations, while the three existing organizations had most of these elements in place, which supports prior research findings (Rowley and Berman 2000). Our research did not support Rowley and Berman, however, that these elements negatively influenced the length of time or resources needed to establish new organizations and garner resources needed to complete these projects.

Our findings demonstrate that community-organization shared urgency, rather than primarily stakeholder power and legitimacy, is a central component in advancing nonprofit cultural organization capital-intensive projects. We took a positive view of how community stakeholders influence these organizations and the benefits that arise from stakeholder interactions in organizations, projects, and communities, as all projects advanced regardless of demographic influences or environmental shocks that occurred.

Our research on community supports both stakeholder theory and practice, and it corroborates scholars who view a positive relationship between social and financial performance (Laplume, Sonpar, et al. 2008, 1167). Our results did not, however, validate the theory that there is a negative correlation between these two elements (Meznar, Nigh, et al. 1994). Material resource hurdles exist in the context of environmental shocks and regulatory controls, but our research supports the idea that organizational learning and societal legitimacy (Heugens and van Riel 2002) are outcomes of community-organization interactions. We consider the discursive practices in all projects and how strategic choices affect and are affected by community interactions, including sociomateriality, sensemaking, and power, in the context of the overall dialogue within the organizational, institutional, and episodic project contexts (Balogun et al. 2014).

The Arts

In the arts, although our research is focused on “capital-intensive” projects in nonprofit cultural organizations, the noneconomic factors, particularly emotional and social bonds, “communicate interpretations of our social surroundings” and “constitute individual and collective identities” (Kirchberg and Zembylas 2010, 1) that transcend both the arts and sociological perspectives. Our research supports the concept that planning and development of cultural facilities is, at times, created based on new economic models, quality of life, and idealism (Rosewall 2006) and that community meetings are “a valuable tool for conveying information to community leaders about the arts organization” (221). Our research connects Rosewall's findings to arts center demand research where facility development is the outcome of valuing the needs of community inhabitants and organizational desire for “community ownership” (Radbourne 2001). Our research amplifies the critical role of community through connection, commitment, and capacity embedded in the mobilization of social and emotional bonds, both of which are broadened and deepened through a capital-intensive cultural facility planning and development process. Our study confirms that demand was not appropriately assessed in some cases, but it moderates research that investments in cultural facilities are determined by population change, education, stock of cultural facilities, and median household income (Woronkowicz 2013). Community demographics, educational attainment, age, and core employment sectors had no impact on advancing the various cultural facility projects. Our findings moderate economic research, as community social development plays a greater role than economic development (192) where social and emotional bonds between the community and organization impact the planning and development of capital-intensive cultural facility projects.

Community

In the sociological area of community psychology and sense of community, our research supports McMillan (2011) that shared emotional connection (Chavis, Hogge, McMillan, Wandersman 1986) and art (McMillan 1996) are based on shared time and quality of time as shared stories, and a spiritual bond, emerge (2011, 510). It further supports the broad core elements of spirit, trust, trade, and art inherent in creating and maintaining sense of community (McMillan 1996). Our research moderates the premise, however, that barriers mark who does and doesn't belong, symbols denote membership, and behavior is influenced by community norms (McMillan 2011). Stakeholder boundaries are permeable rather than fixed, as the relationships between community and nonprofit cultural organizations are based on a policy governance model (Williams 2010) centered on community ambassadorship (Mullett, Jung, et al. 2004) and the importance of volunteerism (Eikenberry 2013; Van Puyvelde, Caers, et al. 2012). Board members, for example, can fill multiple roles in governance—as donors, audience members, captains of industry, and community leaders—without particular boundaries that would otherwise separate them from any of these stakeholder groups. Nonprofit cultural organizations are therefore particularly exposed to stakeholder dialogue and the impacts of community that result in legitimized outcomes (Kornberger and Clegg 2011) for both community and organization.

Our research supports a deeper definition of, and four categorizations for, boundaries—participatory, territorial, functional, and structural (Verweij et al. 2014)—and that these boundaries are defined by community stakeholders but are not necessarily understood or shared by those stakeholders (18). Our research augments prior scholarly research with sharper focus on the impacts of and on community interactions with nonprofit organizations, and the shared urgency that is created as mutually beneficial outcomes are pursued.

Conclusion

Limitations in empirical research studies exist here and elsewhere in the literature. A retrospective study can exhibit biases related to interviewee memory lapses after a multi-year project is completed combined with past-event rationalization, although a multi-stakeholder perspective was taken to mitigate this limitation. Public and private primary data sources were limited, but requests for and access to a range of data were achieved to the greatest extent possible. Case study biases, focused on cultural organizations and their capital-intensive facilities in the metropolitan Northeastern United States, did not focus on rural or other geographic areas. Some might conclude that success bias was evident with each project reaching its grand opening, but in this scenario success was measured not by physical development of a cultural facility, but by how community and organization interactions and stakeholder dialogue led to successful outcomes.

Additional areas for research could include capital-intensive projects in the public sector and at other nonprofit public charities, including education, human services, health, environment, religion-related, and humanities (Laplume, Sonpar, et al. 2008). Our research has been a first step focused on the role of community in the arts and culture sector, and more extensive research in sociological aspects of community, community psychology, and the community-organization relationship is needed in other sectors. Firms of all types, including for-profit firms who consider community influences, may find value in research focused on when, how, and in what ways a community impacts, or is impacted by, boundaries, major strategic initiatives, and capital-intensive projects. Research on the stakeholder attribute of urgency, particularly shared urgency, should be pursued to expand the significant research that already exists on power and legitimacy attributes. Further research in public, private, and nonprofit sectors on the impacts of stakeholders and ensuing performance outcomes would also add to practitioner-oriented and scholarly research, particularly in the area of strategizing activities and practices.

Our article closes with the idea that community-organization interactions imbue a flexible and adaptive process where stakeholders’ material connection, commitment, and capacity to assist an organization's people and projects are centered on emotional and social bonds. These factors will further advance nonprofit cultural organizations, their capital-intensive projects, and their ability to engage the community in mutually beneficial outcomes.

APPENDIX A: RESEARCH ON STAKEHOLDER ATTRIBUTES ARTICLES

APPENDIX B: STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEW GUIDE

INTRODUCTION

For the purposes of this study and to limit the scope of the timeline that is being considered, I’m focusing on three core benchmark points in my questions today, including: (1) the project Concept Stage (i.e., the “idea”); (2) the Planning Stage when you started to invest time and financial resources into testing the concept, determining technical, programming, and organizational facility needs; and (3) the Implementation Stage from when construction started (i.e., the “groundbreaking”) through to the project completion date (i.e., the public opening).

BACKGROUND

1. Please tell me about your position(s) in the organization, when you became involved in the organization and project, and your roles since you've been involved in each of these.

a. (Here I will seek to classify which of the following stakeholder group(s) the interviewee is part.)

Internal Stakeholders

• Board Member

• President/CEO

• Senior Management (non-CEO)

• Mid-Level Management

• Administrative Staff

• Faculty

• Volunteer (non-Board, non-paid) – Describe function: ______________________

External Stakeholders

• Business and Community Leader

• Community Master Planner

• Customer (Select: Subscriber, Single Ticket Buyer, Member, Student, etc., depending on type of organization)

• Donor (Select: Individual, Corporate, Foundation, Government, Other)

• Economic Development Professional

• Educational Leader (i.e., primary, secondary, and post-secondary)

• Facility User (Select: organizations, groups, students, parents, culture creators, etc.)

• Facility Creator/Planner (i.e., architects, acousticians, consultants, etc.)

• Government Official (Select: city, county, state, federal)

• Lobbyist, Public Advocate, etc.

• “Neighboring” Facilities, People and Organizations

• Media

I. CONCEPT STAGE

In my first set of questions, I’d like to focus on the initial Concept Stage for the project when the ideas about the cultural facility were initially being discussed:

1. Please tell me when the concept of building/expanding/renovating (select one or more) your cultural facility occurred. (Or review draft timeline acquired from public sources or previous discussions to test reliability).

2. How did the original renovation/expansion idea come about?

3. Who were the first people behind the idea in its earliest Concept Stage and what was their affiliation to the organization?

   1. Looking back, who do you believe were the most important people involved in moving this Concept forward and why?

   2. As you look back at the Concept Stage, was there anyone who should have been involved and why?

   3. And is there anyone who was involved that you wish would not have been involved at this Stage and why?

4. Is there anything that you or the organization would have done differently during this Concept Stage, and if so what?

5. Who made the final decision about moving forward and what was the catalyst that drove the project forward to the formal Planning Stage?

II. PLANNING STAGE

In my next set of questions, I’d like now to focus on the formal Planning Stage of the project prior to breaking ground or beginning any construction work on the new/expanded/renovated facility.

1. Once you started to invest time and financial resources in planning, how did the organization go about assessing its readiness for this project?

2. Who was or became involved in the Planning Stage and what was their affiliation to the organization?

   1. Looking back, who do you believe were the most important people involved in moving this Planning Stage forward and why?

   2. Was there anyone who should have been involved in the Planning Stage and why?

   3. And is there anyone who was involved that you wish would not have been involved at this Stage and why?

3. Were there any stakeholders from the initial Concept Stage who became less involved in the Planning Stage and why?

4. Were there any detractors to the project at this stage, how were they managed, and by whom?

5. As part of this internal assessment process, did your team perform any of the following steps and who guided those efforts?

   1. Review previous feasibility studies, draft plans, and financial estimates related to this or similar projects at the organization?

   2. Prepare an existing facility inventory and detailed program needs assessment?

   3. Develop an initial conceptual vision of new facilities, including preliminary facility concept type, number of spaces, size, configuration, and qualities of space(s) with an architect and/or theater planning firm?

   4. Prepare order-of-magnitude capital construction cost estimate based on preliminary facility(ies) concept?

   5. Prepare pro forma financial post-opening operating estimates, including expenses, earned revenue, and contributed income goals?

   6. Prepare recommendations on the facility's post-opening ownership, governance, management, and operating models?

6. Please tell me if or how you tested that the timing of the project was right and that it would be supported by “the community.” Who was involved in that testing?

   1. As part of this community assessment process, did your team perform any of the following steps?

      • 1. Conduct a survey of key facility users, attendees, and potential audiences for the facility?

      • 2. Enlist a community advisory or other committee that included external stakeholders? If so, which stakeholders were represented there and what was their primary role?

      • 3. Conduct a funding and/or fundraising feasibility study to test the likelihood that the financing would be available to support the project?

7. Once you tested the overall feasibility of the project and determined that it could go forward, how long did it take before your organization began actual construction on the project?

8. Is there anything that the organization should have done differently during the Planning Stage, and if so what?

   1. And with which people/stakeholders involved or not involved?

9. Who made the final decision about moving forward and what was the catalyst that drove the project forward to groundbreaking and the Implementation Stage?

III. IMPLEMENTATION STAGE

In my next set of questions, I’d like now to focus on the Implementation Stage of the project at the beginning of construction and through to the opening of the new/expanded/renovated facility.

1. Please tell me the approximate date when actual construction on the project started and the approximate date of the completion/opening.

2. Who was or became involved in the Implementation Stage and what was their affiliation to the organization?

   1. Looking back, who do you believe were the most important people in moving this Stage forward and how?

   2. As you look back at the Implementation Stage, was there anyone who should have been involved and why?

   3. And is there anyone that you wish would not have been involved at this Stage and why?

3. Were there any stakeholders from the initial Concept or Planning Stage who became more or less involved in the Implementation Stage and why?

4. Were there any detractors to the project during the Implementation Stage, how were they managed, and by whom?

5. How and when did you communicate with various stakeholder groups during construction?

   1. Why did you feel that it was important to do so during this period?

   2. How were they otherwise engaged in the process during this time period?

6. Is there anything that the organization should have done differently with its stakeholders during the Implementation Stage, and if so what?

CONCLUSION

Finally, in the wrap-up section, I want to bring us back to a broader view of the entire project.

1. Thinking back on the whole process, what were the highlights for you?

2. And were there low points that you recall?

3. What do you believe are the most significant factors to an on-time and on-budget cultural facilities project?

4. What did you learn or would be your main piece of advice for other cultural institutions that are thinking about building, expanding, or renovating their facility(ies)?

5. Is there anything else that I haven't asked you that you’d like to share about stakeholder influence on the development of nonprofit cultural facilities?

6. Are there other internal or external stakeholders who you believe I should speak to about this project?