This brief is based on interviews with leadership and staff of organizations participating in the Wallace Foundation’s Building Audiences for Sustainability (BAS) initiative. It shares interim findings about BAS participants’ experience implementing one key and crosscutting part of the initiative – the use of data and market research. 

Ostrower and team conducted a first round of interviews from late 2015 to 2016 with 152 executive and artistic leaders, BAS project managers (usually from marketing departments), finance staff, and board heads. In 2017 to 2018, after grantees had reached or passed the midpoint of their efforts, they conducted a second round of interviews with 67 executive and artistic leaders (a combined position at some organizations, separate positions at others) and project managers. 

The early interviews provide context, but most of the material presented in this brief comes from the second round of interviews. Interviewees were assured that the interviews were confidential, were strictly separate from monitoring or reporting to the foundation, and that results of individual interviews would not be shared with The Wallace Foundation.