Yours for the Asking: An Indispensable Guide to Fundraising and Management

by Reynold Levy

The second question allows one to appraise progress in an evolutionary way. Were our efforts to improve performance by segment and method from one fiscal year to the next successful? If so, how so? If not, why? The third question compels us to look outside the confines of our own shop and inquire after how our colleagues tackle similar challenges, overall, by segment and by method. What can we learn from them that is adaptable to our own environment? How, precisely, did they achieve superior performance, and what will it take for us to meet or exceed their results? At Lincoln Center, we frequently check out how Columbia and New York universities, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others, conceive and conduct their programs. To be sure, our institution is different in mission, history, and culture. Few initiatives or practices are easily transferable in their current form from one organization to another. Nonetheless, how others fare and why are lessons that can help improve the means and the ends of Lincoln Center’s development efforts. The fourth question is the most challenging and tantalizing. It asks us to compare ourselves not to our budget, nor to prior-year performance, nor even to the conduct of others. Rather, it beseeches us to strive for an ideal, to dream grandly of how well we would perform if we broke the existing mold, engaged in disruptiv...