As optimism for the return to live gatherings cautiously dawns, it’s time to commence the work of rebuilding your choral organization’s capabilities and re-engaging its audiences. Building on “Asking Thru Adversity,” his breakout presentation at the Chorus America Winter Conference, leadership and community engagement consultant Matt Lehrman offers this guide to focusing your efforts.

North American choruses are anticipating a wave of major anniversaries in the coming years, and their leaders are hard at work preparing to mark the occasions. The most thoughtful celebrations honor a chorus’s past achievements, while laying the groundwork for an even stronger future.

Planned giving, also referred to as gift planning or legacy giving, is the act of making a commitment to give a charitable organization a gift, typically as part of a donor’s will or estate plan. It’s something that many choruses are interested in pursuing, but don’t know where to start or worry that the process will be complicated.

Each month, Chorus America profiles one of our members in our Meet A Member interview series. To mark the season of giving, we often change things up a little bit for December by speaking with Chorus America donors. This year, we spoke to Hussein Janmohamed and Joan Szymko, the two composers donating compositions for Chorus America’s 2018 Commission Consortiums.

The viability of every nonprofit chorus depends on the success of its development committee and the effectiveness of the committee chair. With so much riding on this work, how should the board arrange its priorities? Maybe not in the way you’d expect.