Share your thoughts, get the collective wisdom of your peers.
Take the survey by July 29 for the free sector research report + a chance to win $500 for your org!
These are confusing times for arts and culture. Economic tightening, technological changes, culture war crossfires, and general anxiety have the sector under pressure like never before.
We work with many of you and we’re feeling it, too. But if we learned anything through Covid it’s that hard times bring out creativity and new ways of working. Those adaptations are what this survey is about.
Take the survey by July 29, 2026 and you’ll get some fresh perspective and feel less alone in figuring out your next steps in confusing times.
Take a peek at early responses
Q: What changes have been working?
- 💬 “Taking risks on bigger projects than we had undertaken before, if the passion is there the project will succeed.”
- 💬 “We added more volunteers into our rotation. We do not rely on them to function but rather keep staff available to deal with anything that may arise. Has helped with the patron experience and flow of operations during shows.”
Q: What changes didn’t work out like you expected?
- 💬 “Automated tools require more user intervention than might have been hoped.”
- 💬 “Offering cheaper tickets did not result in more patrons.”
Q: If you had an extra $10k in your budget, what would you do with it?
- 💬 “Hire a grant writer for some extra help.”
- 💬 “A simple community event where we all just get together and we feed people.”
Q: What was the biggest change or surprise in supporter giving in the past year or so?
- 💬 “That as soon as we got away from perk based donorship, people started donating with fewer asks and less effort.”
- 💬 “How much a small change in the ticketing checkout flow made in terms of encouraging donations with tickets.”
Itching to add your two cents? Add your responses today:
Who it’s for
We’re surveying people in Canada and the US who work in an arts, culture, and/or heritage nonprofits in one or more of these roles:
- Senior Management
- Promotion and Marketing
- Ticketing and Patron Services
- Donor and Sponsor Development
Responses are confidential and can be completed anonymously. This isn’t your usual sector survey. We’re not asking dull questions about your budget or “are you thinking of a new website in the next 18 months?”. Instead, we’ll explore staffing changes, strategy shifts, revenue health, and a range of sentiment dimensions from on our own experiential and storytelling-based research toolkit.
Your responses will help build a bigger, clearer picture!
If you’re ineligible you can sign up to the newsletter and receive the results when we publish. And if you have colleagues who do qualify, please share the link to this page with your networks so the results are as robust as possible: https://denimandsteel.com/change/.
What you get back
On August 29, 2026 everyone who completes the survey gets early access to the report, packed with insights from arts and culture professionals on how the sector is adapting.
The survey takes up to 15 minutes. Each valid* entry gets your organization the chance to win a $500 donation from us 💞. Multiple people in your org can complete the survey; it’s actually designed for several specific roles. Answer individually or as a group – the discussion itself could be illuminating!
The survey closes July 29, 2026.
*Valid entries are completed by arts and culture organization staff members. One entry per person, but multiple people from an organization can enter the draw. We will disqualify entries with empty, non-serious, or irrelevant responses.
Who’s doing this?
We’re Denim & Steel Interactive. Since 2011 we’ve been providing online communications support to artistic, cultural, and philanthropic organizations. Our work encompasses digital strategy, design, implementation, maintenance, copywriting, and donations development support.
Through 15+ years and nearly 100 projects, we’ve refined a qualitative, experiential, and storytelling-based research process that underlies all our design. Now we’re applying that method to update our understanding of the challenges and changes happening in the cultural sector.
You can learn more about our work, or reach out to say hello@denimandsteel.com.