What is a Community Database?
A community database is a master patron database comprised of mailing lists from participating member arts organizations. The purpose of a community database is to simplify mailing list exchanges; share list hygiene expenses; identify a targeted, qualified and focused group of arts consumers; and examine consumer behavior through comparative market analysis.
Why are Community Databases Important?
Exchanging lists of active patrons is the cheapest and most effective way to augment an organization’s pool of prospective attendees. A community database provides a tool for quickly and easily sharing audience data while improving list hygiene, address correction, and merging/purging of patron databases – all necessary elements for mounting effective direct marketing campaigns. In addition, a community database provides an important research tool for learning about arts attendees and their behaviors within any given market. Analysis can be performed to obtain demographic and psychographic information about patrons, as well as information about how attendees interact within and between each participating organization. This type of analysis can also play an important role in advocacy efforts.
History of TRG’s Community Database Program
TRG started managing community databases in 2004, for the Denver community. At that time, eMerge did not exist and electronic trading was not available. TRG has learned that one of the keys to ongoing effective communities is the need for an organization to provide oversight and a communication point for TRG. In cases where this does not exist, communities are at a much greater risk of failure.
Currently, TRG manages 8 active community databases located in Chicago (League of Chicago Theatres), Denver (Scientific and Cultural Facilities District Collaborative), Houston (Houston Arts Alliance), Los Angeles (LA Stage Alliance), the state of New Jersey (ArtPride Jersey Foundation), Philadelphia (Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance), Seattle (ArtsFund) and the District of Columbia (The Helen Hayes Awards).
View our active programs.
Program Roles & Responsibilities
Community databases can be complex organisms. Maintaining good service levels to the coop members and fostering continued good will among the multitude of participants, personalities and local politics requires good coordination between the TRG Arts service team and the local Community Partner supporting the program. The narrative found through the link below offers further context on the specific activities involved with each task and outlines the major functions, tasks, and roles in the coordination and management of a successful coop program.
View specific roles & responsibilities broken down by TRG, managing partners and members
Program Management - eMerge Drives our Community Programs
TRG set industry standards with the release of the web-based tool, eMerge, which organizations use to manage their data online. In this product, TRG built in functions to also allow for sharing data (or trading) between organizations in the same community. This single feature has saved countless hours for TRG clients and is one of the main reasons that the largest cultural alliances in the United States want to give their organizations access to eMerge.
eMerge allows different organizations within the same city to share lists in a secure permission-based environment. Users may browse tradable lists from their peers and build test counts within the system before ultimately requesting and executing exchanges. Organizations can specify which segments they want to share, and only actually need one segment as shareable in order to participate in a community.
If you are already a member of a community program, please check out the specific eMerge information for your community.
