We are planning our first annual retreat and I am curious of how other theatres are doing their retreats. We will cover vision and mission statements and overall direction of the theatre, committee goals and Board communications. Would you share your retreat experiences? 

Retreat is what the many actors and crew-members do when it is time to strike the set.

Thanks to all for your input. In our 35 years of CT, we have never had a retreat but have been repeatedly advised that it is an important factor for Board growth. We are seeing a shift in our audience demographics and  smaller turn-outs in both audience and audition numbers. Our board shifted from a production based "working " board to a more varied collection of members with interests other than theater production.
This "managing board " concept has left us with fewer participants in the shows from the Board level. Our volunteer activity from a "house " standpoint is one area where the numbers are up.
Despite ongoing successes with our shows, we are struggling to get butts in seats. We do 4 shows annually and do not own our own theater but do have a home.
We feel it is time to address our strategic planning and realign our mission and vision to keep in line with the shift in the market.
Just a little background as to our reason to pursue a retreat at this time.

We just had our first real Annual Retreat this past Saturday. As President of the Board, it is my role to plan the Annual Retreat and our past retreats were not really strategic planning sessions like I am accustomed to.

I interviewed 6 professional facilitators and recommended one to our Board. She has worked with The New Orleans Jazz Festival, the Georgia State Theater and many many other arts organizations.

We spent from 9:30am to 3:30pm together with an hour for lunch and two short breaks. We had NO prior strategic planning or any real plan other than "let's put on a season".

Pre-retreat surveys were sent out and all but 2 members of the board responded with 3 to 5 needs about our Board and our theater company and how we can better serve the mebership, patrons and sponsors. We used this document as a jumping off point.

This is a list of what our 9 Board members and 3 Advisory Council members accomplished:

SWOT - Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats Assessment. We listed everything in our group that applied to these categories including venue, personalities, etc...

Categories: We brainstormed from the SWOT list and our pre-survey assessments what the main categories of improvement were going to be. We ended up with about 20 itmes that fit nicely into 5 catagories.

Goals: We each came up with 6 specific goals under each category and then broke into groups and each of us presented 2 of our ideas to create a list of 6
things to accomplish this year that would help us achieve our goals. When we got back into the group we compiled this into a list of the 18 most important things we need to do this year to accomplish our goals. HUGE.

LUNCH - Short business meeting and a discussion of what happens if the venue is closed due to lack of funds to the arts council.

Action Plan: After lunch we chose which category we wanted to work on and broke into those teams to put quarterly action items (at least 2 per quarter) on a calendar for each of the 3 teams; Communications/Marketing/PR - Membership - and Collaboration (with other arts groups)/Expanding Programming. Each group presented their schedules and we ended up with over 40 action steps that when we accomplish them will drastically change our current organization for the better.

Team meetings: Each group set a meeting date for this week to begin the scheduling of the implementation steps to present to the Board for approval/discussion at this month's meeting.

Watch here for my updates on how we do with follow through.

NOTE: HIRE A PROFESSIONAL FACILITATOR. if you need a reference, I have one.