How does organizational culture make a difference in building community through the arts?

Context

Located in the Metro DC area, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to “build community through the arts.” CHAW offers dozens of arts courses, private lessons, and camps for students of all ages; it finds creative ways to partner with other local community nonprofits and showcases their work via community events such as student recitals, gallery show receptions, and guest performances. 

Research

As part of a large website redesign that included developing built-in data gathering to measure the impact of CHAW courses, Beyond Data conducted an extensive survey to explore CHAW’s mission and the role of CHAW’s culture in connecting if and how community is built through arts participation. The results were heartening and affirmative: not only did participants rate CHAW culture as being highly supportive and the courses highly impactful (in both art skill and social-emotional learning), they also reported high levels of community involvement both inside and outside of CHAW. Moreover, these elements were linked. That is, course participation was connected to greater community involvement because of CHAW’s highly supportive culture. 

Deliverable

The project resulted in several deliverables for CHAW. First, based on the survey results, we were able to identify the “best” items for CHAW to use in their ongoing data-collection work. Our extensive written report offered CHAW leaders a number of operational recommendations for staff development and left them with reliable and valid findings they can use in grant proposals. Last, in our Board presentation we were able to underscore many of the important and distinctive qualities Board members can use to promote the work of the organization.