About Us
Executive Summary
The Board of Directors of the College Art Association is pleased to present CAA’s Strategic Plan for 2005–2010. The plan provides all those involved with the Association, including our board, professional staff, and members, with a vision for the future and general principles for the strategic direction of our programs and services.
Background
The strategic-planning process offers the Board, professional staff, and membership an opportunity to review the Association’s mission and revise it as needed to reflect changes in our fields and the larger world. The plan establishes priorities and strategies for fulfilling them. It identifies urgent needs and longer-term goals. It is not a rigid or prescriptive document, but sets forth general principles, so that the Association can proceed with multiyear projects in an orderly, effective way. Like any such guiding document, the plan cannot be fully predictive; it exists in the real world and is subject to change. While we expect our priorities and strategies to remain the same, our tactics for accomplishing them will continue to develop, in response to changes in the internal and external environment.
Process
Improving the value of membership is essential to our very being as a mission-driven membership association and, as such, was at the forefront of the planning process at CAA. The fifteen-month planning process that has created this plan was inclusive and thorough. As with previous plans, the extent of participation by CAA members has been very impressive. We thank our members for the hundreds of responses that we have received; these comments have been invaluable in informing the plan. After surveying the membership online, in focus groups, and at town meetings in 2003, a strategic planning working group made up of 5 Board members and 2 members of the senior staff * See note held monthly meetings in 2003 and 2004 to assess our members’ feedback, analyze the current economic and creative environment in which our members work, discuss priorities for the Association, and develop strategies for accomplishing them. Throughout the process a professional consultant, Gregory Kandel of Management Consultants for the Arts, has helped us to articulate our vision for the future by building on our core assets and addressing our challenges directly.
Key Elements of the Strategic Plan
CAA provides a bridge between artists, scholars, and other visual-arts professionals. We play a critical role in fostering the ongoing exchange, dissemination, and interpretation of diverse artistic and scholarly viewpoints. With this purpose in mind, over the next 5 years, we will provide essential programs and services to our members and the wider public to ensure the continuation of a full range of artistic expressions and scholarship.
In recent years, scholarly and professional membership organizations in the arts and humanities have all seen a decline in membership, and consequently in revenues. This is due in part to a difficult economy, and in part to a perceived undervaluing of the arts and humanities in our culture. To retain and increase our membership, we must produce products, programs, and services of value, we must ensure that our members are aware of the value of membership, and we must seek new members energetically. In addition, we should actively supplement these revenues with earned income from other sources, such as advertisements in journals, sponsorships and trade-fair participants at conferences, professional-development workshops, as well as with contributed income through a planned-giving program, a targeted annual donation campaign, and the like.
The 2005–2010 plan identifies 6 general priorities for the Association, with a dual concern in mind: To meet the needs of the Association’s members and fields as fully and richly as possible, and with a strong ethical underpinning; and to ensure the financial strength of the organization, in order to do so. Further, we see these 6 priorities as interconnected, each one supporting the others.
Priorities:
- Better serve the membership through communication.
- Become financially self-sufficient, independent of earnings from the Endowment.
- Retain and increase membership.
- Build an integrated electronic information program that strengthens CAA's management and programs and establishes CAA as a primary source of research data in the visual arts and higher education.
- Evaluate the program of exhibitions.
- Maintain the excellence of our publications program.
In order to ensure a successful plan, the Board and professional staff are charged to assess the overall environment and solicit member feedback on a regular basis and to make adjustments to the plan as necessary. In addition to assessing the overall environment, the Board and professional staff will need to regularly assess our progress and develop new tactics that are consistent with the strategic direction set forth by the plan, so that we meet our goals within the context of a balanced budget.
To help us to meet our goals and better serve our members, CAA’s professional staff is being reconfigured without increasing the present budget to include two new positions: a director of career development and a director of media and communications.
The Board and professional staff will continue to strengthen the Association’s governance structure throughout the life of the plan. A review of various models of governance began during the planning process; work in this area will continue with an evaluation of our current Board and committee structure and a further assessment of alternate governance structures so that we will be able to better respond to the professional needs and interests of the membership.
We are confident that we will reach our collectively set goals, which will strongly position CAA to be an energetic, influential, and growing organization when it celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2011.
* Kevin E. Consey, University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, chair, CAA Secretary; Michael Aurbach, Vanderbilt University, CAA Immediate Past President; Nicola M. Courtright, Amherst College, CAA Vice President for Publications; Ellen K. Levy, Independent Artist, CAA President; and Gregory G. Sholette, Independent Artist and Writer, CAA Board member; Susan Ball, CAA Executive Director; and Marta Teegen, CAA Deputy Director>