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Our Chorus Operations Survey is the most comprehensive source of data available on choruses and the choral field. The information gathered helps choruses make better decisions about programming, budgeting, staffing, and other management practices.
Nonprofit leader, humor blogger, and truth-teller. It’s a unique job description, but a perfect fit for Vu Le. Le is the executive director of Seattle-based social justice organization Rainier Valley Corps and the author of NonprofitAF.com, a blog that mixes pop culture and pictures of baby animals with candid insight into the current state of nonprofits.
In an effort to renew our understanding of the roles, responsibilities, and challenges choral conductors encounter and how they affect the choral ecosystem, Chorus America undertook a new study, updating survey findings from a decade ago. The results highlight both important challenges and reasons to feel confident about the health of the profession.
A community chorus is held together by its singers’ commitment to each other and to the group. But what happens when a volunteer singer becomes disruptive to that community spirit—and won’t comply with repeated requests to change their ways? Does your chorus have a carefully spelled-out dismissal procedure, or do you handle things on a case-by-case basis? Or are you sitting there crossing your fingers and hoping it won’t happen, because there is no precedent in recent memory?
Understanding more about choral conducting as an occupation can help choral conductors plan their careers and choral leaders make better decisions. This report uses data drawn from the survey responses of more than 600 conductors to examine conductors' career paths, training, responsibilities, salaries, and more. These key findings provide an overview of both important challenges and reasons to feel confident about the health of the profession, as well as developments since Chorus America's first choral conductor survey over a decade ago. Access the full report, available to Chorus America members, here.
The viability of every nonprofit chorus depends on the success of its development committee and the effectiveness of the committee chair. With so much riding on this work, how should the board arrange its priorities? Maybe not in the way you’d expect.
Singers are the lifeblood of the choral field. Ensembles from coast to coast are anchored by veterans of school and youth choral programs who found the experience rewarding enough that they continued through adulthood. But as choral leaders know all too well, many choristers can’t or don’t stick with it; they drop out of choral singing when they hit significant life transitions.
Do you look forward to your board meetings? I didn’t think so. I go to board meetings several times a week, and most of them make me sad. The main reason? The typical meeting structure offers little opportunity for board members to LEAD.
Choral conductor Robert Shafer reflects on his many experiences over the span of his 50 years in the Washington, DC choral community with choral singer and writer Michael Doan.
