• Audience growth
  • Board Development
    • Improved financial systems and controls
      • Fundraising
        • Strategic Plans
          • Marketing & Branding
            • Social Entrepreneurship

These are just some of the ways that NESC’s Arts Consulting Group has been helping more than 120 museums, orchestras, theater groups, dance companies, arts schools, botanical gardens, government agencies and others in the Tristate area.

Examples:

1. For a Manhattan dance troupe wrestling with spiraling costs, NESC crafted a realistic budget and spending controls that have put the group solidly into the black.
2. For a Connecticut museum seeking greater returns from its Museum Store, NESC proposed revamping the layout, changing the merchandise mix and improving marketing.
3. For a Queens classical music ensemble troubled by flat fundraising, NESC found ways to restructure the group’s Board, transforming it into a powerful fundraising engine.
4. For a Manhattan museum seeking to make its Board more effective, NESC devised a new governance structure and identified ways for Board members to make stronger contributions to the organization.
5. For a Queens theater with faltering ticket sales, NESC crafted a workable and affordable marketing plan.

The NESC Method

Initial Meeting & Proposal
At initial exploratory discussions with NESC, the prospective client describes the challenges or problems or opportunities it faces. From this, NESC crafts, at no fee, a detailed Proposal outlining how NESC can help solve those problems and exploit those opportunities.

The NESC Team
If the client decides to retain NESC for the project, NESC Senior Vice President and Arts Consulting Group Director Betty Lefferts recruits the Consultant Team.

These senior executives and seasoned professionals contribute their time and experience and share the client’s passion for arts and culture.

Many have been working with arts and cultural groups for years and have mastered the ways that these groups cost-effectively can address a wide array of problems and issues.

Interviews, Digging & Assessment
NESC Consultants meet with the client’s officers, Board members and appropriate staff and stakeholders. They burrow into the organization, coming to understand its vision and mission, observing and analyzing its operations and assessing the broad environment in which the client functions and the competition it faces.

The NESC Report
From its research, the NESC Team produces a Report, which will evolve through much iteration as it is revised to reflect Client comments and suggestions. The Report includes an assessment of the problem and opportunities and an analysis of the Client’s resources. Most importantly, it prescribes very detailed pragmatic, reasonable and affordable ways to address the matter. This includes specific Action Items, resources needed, a TimeLine and an Accountability Process to ensure that the Report actually spurs action and does not sit on the client’s shelf.

The NESC Fee
The scope of the project and the client’s budget determine NESC’s fee. Whatever the fee, it is always a small fraction of that charged by commercial for-profit consulting firms.

The Special Mentoring Program

For small arts and culture groups, NESC offers a unique consulting program.

For a very modest fee, a Client can schedule monthly visits with a team of NESC Consultants specifically qualified to address issues chosen by the Client.

For eight years, Betty Lefferts has headed NESC’s Arts Consulting Group as an NESC Senior Vice President.

An accomplished freelance fundraising consultant and grant writer, she formerly was Executive Director of the Girls Club of New York and of The Karen Horney Clinic and Director of Development for the Cancer Prevention Research Institute, the Audrey Cohen College and Lehman College of the City University of New York.

She earned her MS Degree from Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, her BS (in Chemistry) from the University of Michigan and her Certificate in Not-for-Profit Management from Columbia University. A trained and skilled musician, she performs in and organizes chamber music programs.