CultureADD: How and Why

CultureADD(Assess. Diagnose. Develop.) is a program developed to assist nonprofit arts and cultural organizations with operational improvement efforts.

Step 1: Assess – Begin and end your operational improvement efforts with a comprehensive understanding of your organization’s business practice strengths and weaknesses. The CultureADD online assessment tool provides immediate performance-based feedback and tools for interpreting the assessment results.

Step 2: Diagnose – While each assessment report comes with a guide for interpreting and acting upon your assessment results, sometimes you may prefer to review and discuss your assessment results with professionals from outside your organization. CPAC staff members are available to provide a deeper diagnosis of your organization’s assessment for a nominal fee*.

Step 3: Develop – Once you have completed your assessment and identified the root cause of any operational weaknesses, it is up to you to take the next step to strengthen your operations. CPAC can assist your organization in identifying the appropriate business practice expert to provide specialized improvements*. You can also visit our resource library to find web-based information that may be helpful to you. Finally, you are welcome to come back to the CultureADD website regularly, to retake the assessment and evaluate your performance against previous results**.

*This service is available only to nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in Northeast Ohio (Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage and Summit Counties).

**Organizations are charged the $100 fee for each assessment completed. However, you will always have access to previous assessment results at no cost.



CultureADD’s Genesis
CPAC has learned through its planning research and technical assistance consultancies that many arts and cultural organizations, especially those with annual budgets of less than $5 million, tend to have difficulty gauging their business practice health. Concurrently, funders acknowledge that while they provide many technical assistance grants to small- and medium-sized organizations, business practice weaknesses often continue beyond the grant period.

To determine why these weaknesses linger, we gathered a wealth of data. Our analysis of the data led us to the following conclusions:
  • Small- to medium-sized organizations are often not able to determine the core cause of their business practice issues.
  • Organizations often treat symptomatic issues without identifying the root problems that produced the symptoms.
  • Many online assessment tools are standardized and not performance-based.
  • There are thousands of business consultants in Northeast Ohio; however, there seems to be a lack of “primary care” business practice providers and programs for the region’s nonprofit arts and cultural groups.
In early 2001, CPAC joined forces with National Arts Strategies (formerly National Arts Stabilization), to develop a performance-based assessment tool that could be used by organizations to examine strengths and weaknesses in six business practice areas: board operations, communications/marketing, financial management, human resources, information technology and strategic planning. CPAC launched the online version of the performance-based assessment in January 2003.

A Note of Thanks
CultureADD is made available to small- to medium-sized nonprofit arts and cultural organizations due to the generous start-up support of the Ohio Arts Council and The Wallace Foundation. The Ohio Arts Council was one of 13 state arts councils to receive funding through The Wallace Foundation’s START program, an initiative designed to increase participation in the arts. CultureADD was one of five initiatives in Ohio to receive funding through the Ohio Arts Council–Wallace Foundation partnership. CPAC expresses its sincere gratitude for this support.
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Developed in cooperation with National Arts Strategies and the Ohio Arts Council