Benchmarking

Keep it simple. Only choose a few really important performance indicators for a first study, you can always add to it later. Look back at your objectives for the project and if a particular performance indicator won’t help you to reach those, leave it out. Be ruthless!

Make sure you really define what is included in each benchmark; some arts organisations include photocopying or web hosting in their marketing budgets, others don’t; some galleries measure footfall into the gallery building (perhaps including a shop or café), others only into the gallery space.

You may have to make some compromises and decide that a definition is ‘good enough’ to get you to the next stage. Once you’ve actually collected some data, you’ll see the real discrepancies emerge and you’ll be able to refine your performance indicators more easily. So, yes, it’s really important to be rigorous but don’t get bogged down to the extent that you grind to a halt!

Secondly, look for help amongst the case studies and examples on this site. You may find that one of the ADUK pilot groups has encountered, and solved, the same problem.
 

Again, be realistic at planning stages and don’t attempt the impossible. If you don’t have the data (for example age, gender and/ or cultural diversity of your audiences) you might need to think about some research first before you’re ready to benchmark. Again, look back at your objectives to help you prioritise and decide if you really do need this information.

It’s really important to get buy-in across your organisation. The ADUK pilot studies have not been prescriptive about who from each organisation attends and the groups have seen artistic directors, curators and programmers, finance managers, general managers and marketers as members. This has added to the broad ranging discussion and the variety of skills in the room has been very useful. You might find it useful to talk to other organisations for examples about how it’s helped them. And show their ideas to your director.

Alternatively, start with one very effective benchmark and prove that it’s useful before you move on to a bigger project.

 

Lack of clarity about what you want to learn could mean you end up sharing the wrong performance indicators and learn nothing useful. Go back to your objectives and see if you can work out what’s gone wrong.

Go back to your objectives and make sure that you are all interested in the same areas. It may be that you need to divide into smaller groups to focus on specific aspects.