Dancing into Dual Leadership

The source of revenue for nonprofit performing arts organizations has shifted over time with the continuous reduction of government support. Nonprofit performing arts organizations are faced with the dilemma of financial and organizational sustainability while continuing to pursue artistic freedom. Companies in the performing arts industry are typically structured with a “dual leadership†and a dual mission: artistic and operational. This study addresses the influence of leadership structure and board member involvement on the financial performance of nonprofit dance organizations. This study expands on previous research and analyses the impact of leadership structure on unearned and earned revenue sources in the dance sector. The first portion of this study comprises of a literature review that explores existing research on leadership structure, board member influence, and revenue composition in nonprofit organizations and identifies if the dance sector performs as expected, in general. In the second portion, we perform a regression analysis exploring the relationship between revenues and leadership structure for a sample of 135 dance organizations based in Texas. We find that while the literature supports a dual leadership model for maximizing revenues, the simple linear base model estimates do not conform to this expectation for dance organizations in Texas. However, the estimates obtained from a log-linear model, suggest that dual leadership and board member participation contribute positively and significantly to the financial performance of those organizations.