Your most recent post really struck a chord and a resounding, “Yes!” — Marketing and development are the ying and yang of a performing arts institution, and often, they are not in sync and out of balance. Historically, I would argue, the pendulum has swung heavily in the direction of development in terms of budget and, both board resource and buy-in, often leaving marketing departments lacking. I have witnessed development and marketing departments operating not only on different branding playing fields of an institution (this due to weak marketing), but physically as far apart from each other as they could be; on different floors, in separate wings. If marketing and development represent the right and left hemispheres of the organizational brain, respectively, then they must operate if not in complete unison, then in a complimentary fashion stemming from an organization’s strategic plan. And it is essential to invest institutional capital into realizing more earned revenue just as it is to contributed.