Overview: Nonprofit arts organizations have to place nonprofit ahead of arts in order to thrive in these pre-post-pandemic days. Most currently don’t. Scene change is a phrase tied to the arts when discussing a literal change from one scene in a play to another, eliciting a new time, place, and situation.

Verdict: Here, however, it refers to actions made at this pivotal moment within the entire sector, where the rules that went into play over half a century ago can no longer apply for the arts to serve their nonprofit purpose.

That charitable purpose – to help those who need the help – cannot exist in an environment of privilege, exclusivity, and the subjective concept of excellence. Excellence does not put food on a hungry person’s table, if they even have a table.

In his brilliantly unpretentious, snarky, and hilarious style, Alan Harrison pulls no punches. He identifies and addresses elitism, defines and defuses toxicity, and provides outlines for success, including a hopeful prediction for the future.

Furthermore, this book also provides context for the pinball journeys of a 30-year adventure, leading nonprofit arts organizations in America – warts and all.

A truly gifted writer who dutifully, nay expertly combines levels of humor and compassion that seamlessly identify, and as articulately as one could ever hope, the offers of solutions to some of the challenges in the nonprofit and arts sectors, along with sharing his very own, impassioned thoughts about the flurry of inequities he sees as a citizen of the world on a daily basis, Scene Change: Why Today’s Nonprofit Arts Organizations Have to Stop Producing Art and Start Producing Impact by author Alan Harrison shares his perspectives; in layman’s terms and with a genuine diligence to never wander or shirk his prose responsibilities.

A man who was adamantly strong when it came to promoting the mission of ArtsWest and whose clarity of purpose together with an undeniable steely, and unwavering focus when lasered in on something, his thoughts within this book are just as decisive, just as impassioned as they are in real life (if you have ever had the chance to meet him in person), and therein his ability to identify the priorities needed to achieve a goal and then make it/them a reality are, to my mind, second to none.

In closing, the books is not only a must-read for anybody even the slightest bit interested in what he has to say, but a serious must-have for all donors, board members, and all those even vaguely attached to the non-profit performing arts.

Alan himself fully admits that he never set out to be an arts administrator, let alone an executive director, not even understanding at that time what a non-profit organization was or how it operated, or not, as the case might be. Moreover, and as most unemployed performers put it, and with just $5 in his bank account, he had to get himself a job job.

Thus to read about his rise, and some time glorious falls, within this locked-into industry over the years, not only provides the reader with a sense of knowing the man behind the prose, but actually aligns us to his chosen directive, his dedicated profession to explore, and subsequently help change; and thus gives us all a better sense of his humor and worldly viewpoints culled from his smorgasbord of experiences with their/his regard.

About the Author - Based in Kirkland, Washington, Alan Harrison is a writer and speaker specializing in nonprofit arts organizations, strategy, and life politics. His blog posts appear regularly in major publications, including ArtsJournal. For 30 years, Alan Harrison has explored the relationships between the arts and the community on behalf of nonprofit arts organizations across the United States.

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