Lose the department borders and territorialism! Assign tasks by expertise!

There are way too many walls in a nonprofit theatre office, and it is creating problems. It is time to break down some walls and blur the lines between what each department does. If you have a great staff they will work better together if we follow the way we handle shows for every major task we have.

Switching completely to project management mode might save your staff. And I mean save in the truest sense of the word. Theatre staffs are overworked, underpaid, and over-stressed. Changing a few simple things may save folks.

Internal collaboration is the correct business term – but I think the production process is exactly that. On a show everyone knows what they are responsible for but they also know that they must collaborate with everyone's department and help out when help is needed. The process is at its best when there is no territorialism – boundaries of course are respected, but it is a solid team effort.

If you have ever produced a gala, this is the only healthy way to do it – treat it like another production, give assignments out to people based on their expertise and you will have a successful process. When the development department tries to do it all on their own, it is a recipe for disaster. If there is a performance component or artists involved, why would you not have company management, production and the experts at your organization in charge of it? The communications and graphics should be coordinated through marketing. It is just another show.

Since many already know that about events let talk about something most people wouldn't think of first. Your annual audit is another production. What? That is the finance department's job right? No it is not. If everyone is aware of what goes into testing, every department can be working on the audit throughout the year. Usually every donation over $5,000 is subject to testing, can't the development department just make an auditors copy when a donation is processed and put it all in a notebook for auditors. All contracts over a certain amount are tested, can't each department create an auditors copy at the time it is done. Sample contracts, marketing materials, and many other testing materials don't change and won't change, so why not have each department tracking it throughout the year. Wouldn't this also foster a better understanding (and relationship) with the finances and finance department?

Marketing and Development department who work together will generate customers for each other. Let's extend that say to production vendors. What if each production vendor was treated as a potential donor? We did this with rental inquiries at one organization and converted many rentals into corporate sponsors who among other benefits received building usage – but for a much higher amount than the rental would have generated.

There are so many projects we do each year that if we forgot about whose department it belonged in and instead focused on who the best people were for the project and assigned them the responsibility we would be a lot more efficient and might just save our staffs especially when they keep getting smaller and smaller.