Arts and Culture Organizations: Use Dashboards for Better Reporting

Nonprofit work is complex, including juggling fundraising, donor engagement, volunteer coordination, and program delivery. Arts and culture nonprofits have the added complexity of a leadership team including an artistic director in addition to executive and board. This often leaves little time for leadership alignment and strategic decision making.

For time-strapped nonprofit professionals, dashboards can be a big help. They consolidate information from multiple systems, highlight trends, and simplify reporting.

In our experience, nonprofits tracking data in real-time digital dashboards have an easier time communicating important information with their internal and external stakeholders, including board, staff, funders, customers, clients, and more. Explore the many benefits, including real-life examples of how they could help your organization save time and increase revenues.

What are dashboards?

A dashboard is a visual tool that organizes and displays key data in one place, making it easier to monitor performance and make decisions.

Key features include:

• Data visualization — Charts, graphs, and tables that turn raw numbers into clear insights.
• Real-time updates — Many dashboards pull live data from your systems, so you always see the latest information.
• Customization — You can choose which metrics matter most — such as tickets, donations, program outcomes, or financial health.
• Integration — Dashboards often connect to multiple sources (CRM, accounting software, ticketing systems) to consolidate data.

How arts and culture organizations can benefit from using dashboards

Dashboards allow nonprofits to:

• Get consistent agreement on metrics (both quantitative and qualitative) that matter.
• Structure and focus board discussion — all parties get familiar with “what success looks like.”
• Visualize and simplify complex and large amounts of information.
• Create a top-down, bottom-up data-driven culture.

Many nonprofits don’t know where to start with data. There are multiple systems, innumerable KPIs they want to track, funding restrictions, etc. Starting with an artistic, executive or board dashboard sets the tone and can scale into a holistic digital transformation effort.

Specific dashboard uses for theaters, museums, and other arts organizations

Dashboards can help arts and culture organizations track:

Memberships, subscriptions, and ticketing

Dashboards can show how many members or subscribers your organization currently has compared to the year before. They can also track:

• Which members or subscribers haven’t renewed? Could they be persuaded by another email or possibly a phone call?
• Where your membership and subscriber numbers stand compared to your goal.
• Which single ticket buyers converted to members or subscribers. Are there any trends you could assess to possibly get more members and subscribers?

Special event revenues

Special events such as fundraisers or guest performances can provide significant additional revenue for arts and culture organizations. But just how profitable are they, between the required staffing and food and beverage sales? Dashboards can help track the overall special event revenues and then analyze the true profitability factoring in staffing and food and beverage sales.

Potential donors

Dashboards for prospect research can help arts and culture organizations identify potential donors for new or increased gifts.

Comb your records to see who your long-time members or frequent visitors are. They are your most likely donors and dashboards can help you create target contact lists.

Grant tracking

Designing tools and technologies is critical for easing the burden of grant tracking and monitoring. The more your organization can automate data collection, the more efficient the process. Dashboards and grant tracking software can greatly improve tracking, reporting, and compliance.

Which days to increase staffing to boost revenue

If you’re an organization such as a zoo, aquarium, or museum relying on daily attendance, do you know which days are your most popular? And are you staffing and stocking your concessions and gift shops accordingly to take advantage of your largest crowds?

Don’t leave an ice cream stand unstaffed during a hot summer weekend and miss a significant revenue opportunity. Dashboards can help you track attendance, food, and merchandise sales and help determine where opportunities lie.

Arts and culture case study: How dashboards helped a theater company increase revenues

Alley Theatre, a renowned theater company in Houston, had been using Great Plains for a financial management system, but it lacked the ability to analyze multiple revenue streams, such as earnings from fees, concessions, and other indirect income sources.

When the theater switched to Sage Intacct — offering far more comprehensive financial tracking — it experienced tangible financial gains. For example, the theater reinstated a cancelled show after seeing its overall economic value — a number obscured by the limited data available in its old system but made clear through Sage Intacct’s comprehensive analytics.