Long-time Aikenite DeeDee Vaughters, executive director of the Aiken Symphony Orchestra, holds the weight of the local, up-and-coming organization inside of her petite, white-walled office downtown. Her bulky, outdated laptop sits on her wooden desk, along with a condensating bottle of Diet Coke, while she casually talks on the phone with somebody important about donations, artist contracts, and the first performance of the season—a piano soloist visiting to play Tchaikovsky—quickly approaching in just a few short weeks. Light tension is in the air, but it’s the anticipatory kind, because the symphony has risen to the occasion of a grandiose post-COVID-19 comeback. I spoke with Vaughters over zoom while she was seated in her barren space, with title of “Aiken Symphony Orchestra, Executive Director” stretched out a mile long beside her name. She explained that she had been doing many online meetings with symphony employees from all over the country for a while now. Thanks to the many zoom meetings, virtual school visits, digital events, and social media updates which have kept them afloat, those in Aiken, South Carolina know that the symphony is fighting and that it is here to stay.
This is something that all inside of the nonprofit arts, and many that live in the Charleston area, know and understand that 1) the arts industry is hard, and 2) maintaining monetary, social, and artistic momentum is a battle even without the limits of COVID-19 and its restrictions. Within the pandemic year the Aiken Symphony orchestra (ASO) did not resume completely normal operations, but online work, management, and communication had to continue to survive, much like other small arts organizations in Charleston. Having had minimal concerts during the pandemic year, Vaughters swiftly adapted to the growing importance of the online marketing, fundraising, and public relations work necessary to manage any creative business. As technology evolves and becomes more and more indispensable, even artistic careers require new digital literacy skills and practices that are needed on the daily.
DeeDee Vaughters is well-known in the Aiken area and has many connections both artistic and businesslike in nature, as her husband is an established doctor in the area. She received her B.S. degree in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina and was a nonpaid volunteer as the President of the Aiken Civic Ballet where she fundraised, wrote grants, and managed outreach efforts before joining the orchestra. Her husband encouraged her to find a way to monetize her skills, and eventually the executive director position for ASO fell into her lap when asked if she would be interested in joining; it’s a “combination of talking to people and knowing how to sell” says Vaughters, and she eventually had to adapt to doing so in digital methods come March of 2020.
Since landing the position, Vaughters has faced many problems as well as many solutions related to technology. Last year, ASO put on only three socially-distanced concerts due to the lack of demand—because why pay for a ticket to watch a local orchestra online when you could watch the New York Philharmonic? Another issue was the lack of sync licensing for digital performance, which means that the ASO could not stream the piece live and sell tickets unless the owner of the music was contacted and permission was granted; this is a tedious task, so it was understood that the ASO could not expend that level of energy with a payoff. These were obvious dilemmas, so the past year and a half has been the “perfect storm,” says Vaughters; a stage of planning and strategizing, rather than the expected performing, in order to come back in full force—and they did just that.
Within the past two fiscal years, the orchestra received $24,000 to put on “Concerts and Classrooms,” a digital, recorded lesson with a musician for local elementary, middle, and high schools. Four times throughout the year, students learned about a specific classical composer, heard a piece of their music, watched a demonstration by a musician, and heard from said musician about why they chose a career in music. There is a bigger reach because it was digital and can be share and replayed, but Vaughters’ concern is that it could never beat live music; this is something she understands as an ex-piano and clarinet player. Not only that, but it is difficult to monetize digital performances and programs. Nonprofit arts employees had to get creative, and the creativity must continue, as many digital practices and habits have stuck even more within the local community and the world at large post-pandemic. The symphony also put on a silent, two-week long auction fundraiser, which was completely online. Driven by social media and by email, Vaughters quickly learned that online methods of fundraising could indeed be effective.
“Our job description is very fluid,” she says, especially for smaller nonprofits, but “75% of my job is about fundraising” which means that contacting patrons, businesses, corporations, and obtaining advertisements is a must; talking on the phone, sending emails, managing the symphony’s website, updating social media platforms, and more forces her to “figure out how to market in all different formats” and capitalize on her efforts. Luckily, grant writing does not require in-person meetings, so much of the written work on the job is formatted independently and shared per usual with the intended audience. Vaughters claims that it is “vitally important to apply for [these grants],” because they are what keep nonprofits alive in stagnancy. She sends out email blasts once a week and adds to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram three times weekly. There is an art to this as well, because as the director you cannot overwhelm, bombard, and annoy patrons with information. Social media tools can be used to monitor the analytics of their advertisements, which is a huge help to nonprofit employees, writers, and managers eager to learn what will capture certain demographics. These digital literacies and their balancing acts are learned over time in the career field, but because so many people are online nowadays, it remains important to remind people that you’re there. “We’re still here,” Vaughters repeats calmly but confidently, and it is doubtful that the Aiken Symphony Orchestra is going anywhere anytime soon.