Description
The Knight Digital Maturity Model is a framework for assessing the digital capacity of arts organizations. It emerged from a key finding in a 2021 report on digital transformation I co-led, which was that funders could make more impactful technology investments when they understand arts organizations’ technical capacity from the outset. Without that baseline understanding, funders risk overestimating an organization’s capacity or aiming for outcomes that can’t be sustained (for example, funding an AI chatbot when the org lacks a functioning ticketing system).
Arts organizations often feel perpetually “behind” with technology. While that’s sometimes true, they also have underrecognized strengths, like collaborative content teams or well-structured collections data, that can be leveraged for better grant outcomes.
In collaboration with 8 Bridges Workshop and my Knight Foundation colleague Ricardo Mor, I developed the Knight Digital Maturity Model to address these gaps. It’s a self-assessment tool for arts organizations of any discipline to evaluate their own technical capacity, and for funders to both pre-assess grantees and track progress toward technical goals over the life of a grant.
Project URL: Knight Digital Maturity Model