You’re Not Failing at Audience Development.
- Tanesha Ford
- Feb 1
- 3 min read
You’re Just Doing the Thing Where You Stand in Your Own Way.
There’s an episode of Seinfeld where the solution is obvious. Everyone can see it. Everyone talks around it. And somehow… no one actually does anything.
That’s what a lot of audience development conversations in nonprofit arts spaces feel like right now.
We say we want culturally, generationally, and economically diverse audiences. We commission studies. We sit on panels. We nod seriously in meetings.
And then we keep our pricing rigid.
We shut down digital programs that worked.
We treat access like a temporary experiment instead of a permanent value.
At a certain point, it stops being confusing. It becomes a choice.
I’m not saying this from the outside. During the pandemic, I was a marketing director at a nonprofit arts organization in Philadelphia. Like many of you, we had to pivot quickly—not to be innovative, but to survive.
So we implemented Pay What You Can pricing for our digital programming, with a suggested minimum.
Here’s the part that rarely makes it into board decks: It worked.
We met our revenue needs. In some cases, we exceeded them. And we gained audiences from across the country—people who had never been in our seats and might never have been able to be.
My biggest regret isn’t that we tried it. It’s that when live programming returned, we didn’t bring digital with us.
We lost thousands of viewers. Not because they disappeared—but because we stopped inviting them.
The $11 Ticket Isn’t the Threat You Think It Is
When Opera Philadelphia introduced $11 tickets in 2025, a lot of reactions framed it as risky, radical, or potentially damaging to the brand.
I don’t see it that way.
I see it as an organization being honest about what the barrier actually is—and responding accordingly.
Price isn’t the only barrier to access, but it’s a loud one. And when we pretend it isn’t, we’re not protecting artistic excellence. We’re protecting familiarity.
Flexible pricing doesn’t diminish the work. It signals trust. It says, We want you here enough to remove the obstacle.
That doesn’t mean everyone pays $11. It means more people get through the door. And once they’re there—physically or digitally—you can build a relationship.
Audience development is relational, not transactional.
Pay What You Can Is Not Charity. It’s Design.
Let’s be clear: Pay What You Can is not about lowering standards. It’s not about desperation. And it’s not about assuming audiences won’t pay.
It’s about designing access with real life in mind.
When we used this model online, people paid what they could—and many paid more than the suggested minimum. Because they valued the work and appreciated being trusted instead of pressured.
Most resistance to this model isn’t financial. It’s psychological.
“What if people don’t pay?” “What if it cheapens the experience?” “What if we lose control?”
Here’s the truth: audiences already decide value without us. Every day.
Pay What You Can just acknowledges that reality—and builds a system around it.
Digital Wasn’t a Pandemic Fluke
During lockdown, digital performance removed barriers: geography, transportation, childcare, intimidation, even dress codes. That’s why new audiences showed up.
Then many organizations closed that door as soon as they could.
I understand the impulse. People were exhausted. Teams were stretched thin. The push to “get back to normal” was strong.
But normal never worked for everyone.
Digital performance isn’t a replacement for live art. It’s a parallel path. And now—when short-form and hybrid content are legitimate cultural spaces—it’s an artistic frontier we abandoned too quickly.
The real question isn’t whether digital competes with live performance.
It’s why we decided the audiences who found us online didn’t matter once doors reopened.
That wasn’t strategy. That was fear, dressed up as tradition.
The Moment of Truth
Diversifying your audiences in a real, authentic way is not impossible.
It doesn’t need to be pandering.
It doesn’t diminish your brand.
And it does not need to be easy.
But it is simple. And it is possible.
If you’ve seen flexible pricing work. If you’ve watched digital audiences show up. If you already have proof—
Then we have to ask the uncomfortable question:
What is actually stopping you?
Is it truly capacity? Or is it discomfort with letting go of how things have always been done?
Like a Seinfeld plot, the solution is standing right there. The only difference is whether we’re willing to act before the episode ends exactly the way it always does.
A Question Worth Sitting With
With all the proven ways to diversify audiences already in front of us—honestly—what is your barrier?
And is it really a barrier?
Or just familiar?
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