Get Ready For The 2015 Compensation Reports

Adaptistration People 122It’s just about that time of year again and the 2015 Orchestra Compensation Reports should be ready to publish by the end of the month. This year’s report will cover the 2012/13 season and it will be fascinating to see how things have changed since the previous season, which saw a real uptick in executive compensation and smaller improvements for music directors and concertmasters.

In the meantime, you can feel free to do some investigating of your own. To get started, head over to the Orchestra Financial Reports resource page where you’ll find direct links to each respective orchestra’s GuideStar.org page. Once there, you’ll find download links for their most recently available IRS Form 990s (a free GuideStar account will be required in order to download those files) and that’s the document you want to begin your research.

 

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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