What the Research Says: 3 Marketing Moves for Dance Organizations in an Impossible Moment

Sponsored Content from Amy Jacobus & Grounded Growth Marketing

Earlier this spring, Dance/USA members invited me to lead a session to discuss a set of strategies Grounded Growth Marketing has been developing, which we call our Resistance Marketing Toolkit.

If you read my piece here last fall, you’ve seen that the financial picture for dance organizations is bleak. As far as I know, these numbers haven’t improved. Add to that, IMPACTS Experience’s National Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage Study recently revealed that performing arts organizations score lowest of all 11 cultural organization types on being perceived as community assets, with the least movement over time.¹ What does this mean? Dance organizations are seen as good and worth having, but they are not seen as undeniable “assets to the community.” (At least compared to museums, zoos, and other cultural institutions.)

IMPACTS’ Colleen Dilenschneider names this a “public value translation opportunity.” I’m going to call it our latest dance marketing imperative.

The good news? Dance artists and companies stand to benefit from marketing strategies that mirror the wisdom that’s already embedded in creative practice. For example:

How can our messaging lean into collaboration?
How can we more fully embody what we wish to communicate?
How can we show up authentically and purposefully?

Here are a few of the communications strategies I shared recently with Dance/USA members, and why I believe in them.

Strategy #1: Less Broadcast, More Conversation

When ticket revenue takes on more weight and budgets tighten, the instinct is often to increase promotional output. More posts. More emails. More urgency.

But we’ve seen that the best move is actually to do the opposite: pull back on promotion and invest in storytelling and community engagement instead.

This works because of where communities are placing their trust right now. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer — I referred to their U.S. market report — found that as fears and polarization rise, Americans are redirecting trust away from national institutions and toward neighbors, local employers, and community relationships.⁴ Most arts organizations are already seen as assets in community.¹ That’s an advantage that broadcast-style marketing doesn’t activate — but genuine conversation does.

When your audience feels inspired and genuinely cared for, they become your advocates. They share your work, defend your value, and bring new supporters along. What this looks like in practice:

Share artist voices directly rather than just polished trailers
Ask your audience real questions instead of always leading them to an action
Give your social media manager enough creative latitude to spark conversation in addition to distributing approved content
Share behind-the-scenes process, archive footage, the ideas and questions behind the choreography — not only the choreography itself

Storytelling and community engagement isn’t a distraction or waste of marketing dollars and time. Audience trust is part of the package we need to survive this moment.

Strategy #2: Make Your Values Your Competitive Advantage

First, let’s name what’s actually happening out here. The federal administration, some local governments, and a number of major funders are actively pressuring nonprofits to walk back DEIA language, programming, and commitments. This is a coordinated effort against “woke-ism” and the very values our artistic organizations are founded upon.

I understand one instinct in this environment is to soften and find more neutral language, to quietly remove the equity statement from the website and hope no one notices. (Friends, I’m nosy. I’ve noticed, and I’m probably not the only one.)

The trouble is, organizations that soften or abandon their DEIA commitments are not becoming more neutral — in many cases, they’re actively contradicting their stated missions. And mission alignment is something all audiences care about.

IMPACTS Experience analyzed perceptions of cultural organizations across self-identified Democrats and Republicans and found that both parties view cultural organizations as mission-driven, agreeing that institutions should recommend behaviors aligned with their missions.³ Basically, regardless of political affiliation, audiences expect arts organizations to have and to act on a mission.

Dance organizations most at risk of alienating their audiences are not the ones being visible about their values — they’re the ones whose public face has stopped matching their internal commitments, eroding the trust that holds those relationships.

(A reminder on what nonprofits can and cannot do: arts organizations cannot support or oppose specific political candidates, but they absolutely can advocate openly for DEIA values, equity policies, and the communities their missions serve. Dance/USA’s Dance2Vote resource is a good place to understand where the legal lines actually are.)

What might this look like in practice?

Connect your work to the current moment explicitly rather than hoping audiences make the inference
Share safety information with your audiences and artists attending your shows
Invite community organizers into your programming and give them the mic
Ask for active arts advocacy from your audience — not just donations

Of course, no marketing strategy is worth more than someone’s safety. Trans artists are losing access to gender-affirming care and legal identification. Immigrant artists face genuine risk around touring, visas, and physical safety. These are not reputational concerns. They are bodily and legal ones. Only you know which situation you’re in.

Strategy #3: Transparency as Your Secret Weapon

When funding and audience buying behavior are both uncertain, the reflex is to project stability.

But your audiences — especially the ones you most want to deepen relationships with — don’t need to be protected from hard truths. They need to be trusted with them. And in a moment when people are making harder choices about where to spend their money and time, the organizations they choose to invest in are the ones they trust most.

The Edelman Trust Barometer found that overall institutional trust in the U.S. sits in “distrust” territory at 47, with trust in government at 39% and trust in media at 44%.4 This means that today, arts organizations are among the few institutions still holding meaningful trust: IMPACTS’ 2025 research found that 73.9% of Americans trust performing arts organizations — higher than daily newspapers, other NGOs, state agencies, and federal agencies.³

Edelman’s research also reveals that transparency itself is a trust indicator, even across difference. Among people who trust someone who disagrees with them, one of the top reasons is that the person is transparent about where they stand. Not that they pretend to agree or smooth things over, but that the person is honest.⁴

I would apply the same logic to dance organizations navigating this charged and uncertain time. Radical transparency about your challenges, your choices, and your process builds trust faster than polish ever could. And you can adopt this, too, as a communications posture:

Share why you programmed a particular work and what you hoped it would do for your community
Tell your audience when something didn’t land the way you expected and what you learned
Let people into your thinking, not just the outcome

For fundraisers, transparency also means being specific when you need support. “We need to raise $35,000 in the next 90 days to keep our after-school program running” is more powerful than “please support our annual fund.” “Our program reached 1,714 students this year, and without renewed investment, it goes away” is more compelling than “we serve our community.” Be specific about what you need, what’s at stake, and what you’re asking people to protect. Confusion kills conversions, and clarity drives them.

This directive connects back to the community asset gap in the IMPACTS data. Performing arts organizations have not yet broken through into the “essential infrastructure” tier of public perception the way museums and zoos have.¹ Part of that, I’m sure, is the nature of what we make — dance is more ephemeral, less fixed; performance is of-a-moment, less reliably there. Still, there is much we can say to make the hope and humanity of our work harder to take for granted.

Mission-driven marketing is resistance and sound strategy.

The thread running through all of these strategies is the same: being strategically sound means being values-grounded in your actions and communications.

The research bears this out. The performing arts sector, including dance, has a real opportunity to close the gap and be seen as essential to the communities they serve — but the post-pandemic goodwill lift is flattening, and we need to lean into showing public benefit more explicitly.¹

The dance companies who have Grounded Growth’s respect right now are clear about who they are, what they stand for, and what they need. They lean toward their audiences and name the hard things. These strategies require intention and perhaps a little courage, but not additional budget. And my bet is that the organizations that engage in this way will build the relationships to carry them through whatever comes next.

Keep going. We’re rooting for you.

To dialogue and bravery and keeping it real.

Download the free Resistance Marketing Toolkit — five counterintuitive strategies for arts organizations, with specific how-tos for each — at groundedgrowth.marketing/dusa-conference.

¹ IMPACTS Experience, “Cultural Organizations Are Increasingly Perceived as Assets to Their Communities,” Know Your Own Bone, May 2026.

² IMPACTS Experience, “How Has Trust in Cultural Entities Changed?,” Know Your Own Bone, April 2025.

³ IMPACTS Experience, “Democrats vs. Republicans: Do They Feel Differently About Cultural Organizations?,” Know Your Own Bone, July 2025.

⁴ Edelman Trust Institute, 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer: Trust Amid Insularity, U.S. Report.