Arkansas Arts Center’s economic clout sought

An Arkansas Arts Center trustee’s firm will produce a report about how the museum boosts Little Rock’s economy and culture, with the findings to be used to solicit grant money and private donations, officials said Monday.

Trustee Del Boyette, founder of Little Rock-based Boyette Strategic Advisors, will not charge the Arts Center for the work, so the arrangement doesn’t violate city or state ethics rules, City Attorney Tom Carpenter said.

The Arts Center, in the early stages of a $46 million overhaul of its MacArthur Park museum, has identified a need of $50 million in donations to cover the expansion cost and grow the museum’s endowment, which the museum’s nonprofit foundation manages, Herman previously said.

That sum is in addition to a $37.2 million bond package voters approved last year to pay for the project.

After a presentation informing trustees of what to expect from the study, museum director Todd Herman said he doesn’t believe Boyette’s standing as a board member will undermine the report’s credibility.

“The firm has a good enough reputation, and I trust that what they produce is going to be based on the facts they find,” Herman said. “It’s not unusual for a board member to offer something like this. It’s to help the organization. … I really would be hard-pressed to believe that there would be a credibility issue with that.”

Boyette, who didn’t attend the meeting and was unavailable for comment Monday, made the offer during a lunch with Herman, the director said.

Kay Stebbins, the firm’s director of research, said Boyette’s role as a trustee will have no bearing on the study’s results.

“If we don’t have credibility for this type of work, people wouldn’t hire us to do it,” Stebbins said in an interview. “We are treating this just like it was a client that was paying us for this work.”

Similar studies have looked at the impact of the arts statewide, but this will be the first such report specific to the Arts Center, Herman said.

“It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, but we practically didn’t have the money to do it for a long time,” Herman said. “We know we have an impact in this community, but now it gives us some real numbers that we can link to in discussions.”

Boyette Strategic Advisors crunches numbers and collects stories to measure how much companies or other entities drive economic development and contribute to their communities. It has worked with clients such as Entergy, the Clinton Presidential Center and the electronics company Philips, but this will be its first pro-bono job for a nonprofit group, Stebbins said.

The typical cost for such a study, depending on its scope, is between $40,000 and $60,000, she said.

The firm will report on the the Arts Center’s influence on spending, education, community engagement, neighborhood development, partnerships and tourism over the past five years, Stebbins said. She and Herman said the museum could commission a follow-up study after the expansion project is complete to measure the project’s impact.

Boyette’s firm will begin the study June 22, and it will take three to four months to complete, Stebbins said.

The firm collects numbers on employment, attendance, volunteers, investment and other data from its clients and puts that information into an economic impact formula that yields the results, Stebbins said. The formula is consistent from client to client, she said.

A graphic highlighting the Arts Center’s benefits will accompany the written report, which also will draw from interviews with people who have come into contact with the Arts Center. For example, an anecdote could be about someone who was first exposed to the arts as a child through the museum and then grew up to be an artist or philanthropist, Stebbins said.

“There’s very limited quantifiable information, but there’s a much bigger story to tell,” Stebbins said. “That’s what we want to get into.”