Individual Case Report 3: Marketing and Fundraising

Individual Case Report: Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) and Art With Impact (AWI)

MFA’s Objective and Target Audiences

In the Monet in the 20th Century exhibition, MFA had the primary goal of expanding while trying to maintain its leverage of fine arts. Despite growing at the time in the number of collections, the Boston-based art museum was struggling financially. The revenue sources were not enough to fund its activities. Besides, many people visiting the place when doing single events did not renew their membership. This resulted in a low number of loyal members, which made the business's profitability despite its experience and mastery of fine arts exemplary. Therefore, for the MFA, the main objective was to ensure that the museum first became profitable and marketed its name beyond the Boston metropolitan area (Greyser and David 2). As a result, it hoped that the size and diversity of the magnitude could also grow as the member base also grew with those who became loyal and returning increasing. One of the crucial components of the MFA's objective was to ensure that it maintained and promoted Boston and its art as a cultural-based heritage of the region that could help boost the economy through tourism attractions (Greyser and David 2). The effort of MFA in promoting the Boston culture made it form partnerships with the local government that supported most of its initiatives.

The target audience was the general global audience. Most importantly, a primary target was an English-based audience in London and people from around the USA, including outside the Boston metropolitan region. The MFA indicated that in its marketing plan, some of the efforts should specifically target increasing the number of people from outside the area to increase the experience of the Boston culture, grow its membership outside the region, and have its cultural-based arts be felt in the other areas as well (Greyser and David 2). For Fleet, the main target was the Boston audience. This is because the company, including its merger, had just relocated its headquarters to the region. By opting to partner with the MFA in sponsoring the event's planning, Fleet hoped that it would be reflected as a Boston based company that integrated the cultural values of the place, which could help promote its name in the light of frequent mergers that resulted in intense restructuring and disruption of services to customers (Greyser and David 3). In this way, promoting Fleet in the event as a Boston-based financial firm and not England would enhance its chances of success in the American market.

Rationale for Partnership

In this partnership, both MFA and Fleet stood a chance of gaining a lot from it. However, for the collaboration to work, Fleet needed to learn the cultural values of MFA; align with the fine arts and goals of the MFA to collaborate successfully in the marketing of the event. This could be seen in how the planning proved to be more difficult than anticipated when signing the partnership. One of the main rationales was that the projected attendance of the audience and intended magnitude of the exhibition was considerable, and MFA could not cover all the finances, especially in the marketing (Greyser and David 3). The choice for Minot as the artist to display was because of how most of the audience loved his art in the US and across London and the cultural attachment of the art to the Boston region. Therefore, choosing to highlight his art for the period, including some that had never been showcased, was anticipated to attract a large population of more than 500000 (Greyser and David 3). The MFA had no financial capacity not only to fund an event of such magnitude but also to cater to all the marketing needs. For this reason, a partnership with such a successful financier could help take care of the cost of the project and reduce the burden on MFA, which could help make it a success and help both partners achieve their goals.

For Fleet, the partnership was critical. The choice of funders such as Fleet associating with art is primarily because of the promotion of their services. The main aim of Fleet was to continue its growth. Recently, its restructuring has affected the continuous supply of its services in some regions, which could affect the reputation of the company and lead to low sales (Greyser and David 4). However, before the event, one of the company's core values was corporate citizenship, which is used as an avenue to give back and continue engaging with the community. The Minot exhibition and the partnership offered even more value and routes for the two to integrate and connect with their cultural values as Boston-based businesses and strengthen their social and economic ties (Greyser and David 4). The expression of the cultural significance of Fleet as a corporate citizen, caring about the community and its importance, and going a long way to support the initiatives that were important to them through art representation was, therefore, an excellent strategy to market Fleet and maintain loyalty in customers in the long term. On the other hand, Fleet was already a stable and fast-rising financial services company with the capital MFA needed for the event. By the time the event was happening, Fleet had already been ranked the 8th richest bank in the US. Besides the financial, the cultural aspect was also critical as MFA did not want a corporate sponsor with values that differed much from its own (Greyser and David 4).

Internal and External Challenges of AWI

The AWI program is seen as both an art and mental health organization. The markets in the US and Canada are also different and run independently. However, from the revenue perspective, the US market has more support from donations than Canada. The revenue is sourced from people primarily through emails and social media, sometimes calls to traces with previous donors (Ivey Business School Foundation 4). The strategy to focus the marketing on two months to fund activities throughout the entire year was not effective in raising the expected amounts in respective places to enable the company to reach more universities, colleges, and schools across the regions (Ivey Business School Foundation 5). First, despite having the potential donors that could help AWI reach these targets, it failed to execute its outreach strategies and continued its sustained campaign to attract donors. Secondly, it avoided targeting large donors and organizations and instead focused on the agencies that supported it and small donors. This made the effort of seeking donations be too much than the amount received.

AWI Fundraising from Individual Donors

AWI has realized the importance of diversifying its solicitation of funds. One way it has identified apart from the small donors is to target the crowdfunding sources. The survey was conducted, and the origins of this information depicted the crowdfunding strategy with companies such as Indiegogo. Besides, getting members to sign petitions to help increase government funding to the organization will help to increase the number of donations. From the survey, it is evident that many people know a person or have interacted with an individual with a mental health issue.

For this reason, they show support towards the initiatives of AWI using art to address the issues, especially among school-going teenagers and young adults (Ivey Business School Foundation 6). In this case, the organization needs to sell the benefits of good mental health to the donors. In addition, prospects such as the government as a funder can be helped by reducing the number of young people in hospitals due to mental health conditions.

Works Cited

Ivey Business School Foundation, "Art With Impact: Non-Profit Funding.". 2018, pp. 1-9. Ivey Publishing, Accessed 19 Apr 2022.

Greyser, Stephen A, and David Crockett. "The Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston/Fleet Financial Group Sponsorship Of Monet In The 20Th Century". Harvard Business School, 2002, pp. 1-11., Accessed 19 Apr 2022.