Hello and welcome to The Cycle, Management of Successful Arts and Cultural Organizations, a new online course created by the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. My name is Michael Kaiser and I'll be teaching the course with my colleague Brett Egon. In this course, we are going to learn about a management theory called the cycle which we believed produces driving arts and cultural organizations regardless of art form, geography, or size. The DeVos Institute was formed to help organizations cope with a very challenging environment, in which governments are cutting their funding, arts education is vanishing from our schools, audience expectations are changing, traditional patrons are aging and new forms of entertainment are being offered free, or at low cost on the Internet. Learning from our work with managers from over 80 countries around the world. We developed the cycle as a simple but powerful tool to assist managers and their effort to cut through this increasing complex environment and propel their institutions to excellence. The cycle explains a great art and strong marketing, create a family of supporters who, in turn, help the organization produce the revenue required to support even more great art the next year. We have seen the cycle work in performing and presenting organizations but also in museums, art schools, and other nonprofit endeavors like service organizations, historical societies, public libraries, university programs, advocacy organizations, botanical gardens, and zoos. We have designed this course from managers, board members, funders, students, and even patrons, and enthusiasts of the arts and cultural organizations who are interested in learning how to build thriving organizations in this world today. By taking this course you will learn the importance of bold, exciting, and mission-driven programming. You will learn how long term artistic planning can help an organization produce this work. You will learn how an organization can aggressively market that work and the institution behind it to develop a family of supporters including ticket buyers, board members, donors, trustees, and volunteers. You will learn how an organization can cultivate and steward this family to build a healthy base of earned and contributed income. And finally you will learn how an organization can reinvest that income into increasingly ambitious programming year after year. Each week we will explore one area of the cycle through a series of lectures, readings and quizzes. We will begin with an overview to introduce you to the concepts. Then, discuss long-term artistic planning followed by marketing. Next, we will proceed to strategies to develop and engage a family who want us to succeed. Including strategies aimed at United States audiences and audiences around the world. And how to convert the goodwill of that family into revenue to produce even more great art each year. To help you understand how each principle can be applied in a variety of organizational settings, we've included answers to questions frequently raised by our students and colleagues around the world. As well as a section called The Cycle In Practice, composed of case studies for managers who applied the principles of the cycle in their organizations. In fact, we will follow one specific organization, Dance Place in presenting and teaching organization based here in Washington DC throughout the entire cycle. While this course provides an introduction to our philosophy, the successful application of the cycle will require your creativity, rigor, and sensitivity to the unique conditions faced by your community. To help you with this process we've included a series of activities you can complete for your own organization. If you are a student or enthusiast not affiliated with a specific organization, we recommend you select an organization of your choosing to reference as you make your way through the course. We hope this course will help many of you in your work building thriving and vital arts institutions. We look forward to working with you over the next several weeks.