So who are these “future leaders” anyway?

We know that the language of “future leaders” can be confusing – there are any number of programs and organizations using similar language. Our initial definition for our audience was “people who see themselves three to five years away from senior positions in nonprofit cultural institutions.” But the environment is much less predictable than it was even a year ago, and it is no longer as clear to people where they will be in three to five years.

As we’ve been having conversations with communities across the country, we’ve been challenged to think more specifically about who our target audience is. It’s become clear to us that there are any number of ways to define our audience. Some of the alternate ways to describe the characteristics and interests of our audience include:

• Mid-career professionals, with 5-15 years of experience in the field interested in advancing to the next level of leadership, in part, by acquiring additional skills
• Professionals who have just come into a leadership role in a smaller organization and are interested in pursuing additional formalized training
• Professionals working their way up through larger institutions interested in understanding the politics and paths of advancement and in expanding their professional networks/mentors

When you boil it down, we see our target audience as people with experience, who are dedicated to the field, and have aspirations to move into more senior roles. We don’t see age or educational background as a factor. And we see our audiences coming from both the administrative and artistic sides of organizations.

What do you think – do these descriptions fit your vision of our sector’s future leaders? If no, what are we missing?

Survey Results Part 2: Aspirations

The first part of our survey asked people about their aspirations and goals, and included questions about where they would like to be in five years, what type of professional development planning they undertook, and what detailed elements of professional development were most important to them.

“I would like to remain in the museum field. But I would like to be at a larger institution that is financially more stable and that has the staffing and collection to be more ambitious programmatically. My goals would be to make the museum’s collection more relevant to the communities and audiences we serve – to make art a greater part of our everyday lives.”