ECMA is Now Blaming Me For Their Financial Crisis
Here are some actual financial decisions I made while in the hot seat as ECMA's CEO
Rumour has it that ECMA is now blaming me, as its former CEO, for the financial shortfall that has left artists waiting more than two months to be paid for their performances at the 2026 event.
That’s... convenient.
When a former colleague shared this yesterday, I was actually kind of giddy. Because I feel somewhat ridiculous rehashing this stuff at this point (can’t she move on already?), but if ECMA wants to revive ancient history, I’m happy to join in on the fun.
Let’s establish a timeline.
I was CEO from March 2024 until January 2025. I was terminated roughly four months before the May 2025 conference. Most of the spending that determined the financial outcome of that event (and certainly the May 2026 event 16 months later) happened long after my termination. During my tenure, I approved very little discretionary spending beyond artist payments.
What I spent most of my time doing was trying to stop the bleeding.
It quickly became obvious that ECMA’s financial problems weren’t the result of one bad year. They were structural. I started challenging long-standing spending practices, sole-source contracts, and operational inefficiencies that had become untouchable.
The pushback was extraordinary.
Death by a thousand software subscriptions
ECMA was spending more than $50,000 annually on disconnected bits of software: SurveyMonkey, SurveySparrow, MailChimp (so many animals). Canva, Adobe, DelegateSelect. WordPress. Zoom.
Dozens of systems that barely spoke to one another. To say nothing of the annual development of our own bespoke conference app.
One discovery still makes me shake my head: ECMA was paying more than $5,000 annually for Google Workspace despite Google’s nonprofit program offering free or heavily discounted options.
I began cancelling redundant subscriptions, consolidating systems, and researching alternatives.
It wasn’t glamorous work, and it was a pain, but it added up.
The $200,000 supplier nobody could compete with
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Putting office rent to better use
While I was at ECMA, we closed the Halifax office and went fully remote.
Members outside Halifax had regularly criticized ECMA for feeling too Halifax-centric. We already had staff and contractors across Atlantic Canada, most meetings happened online, and only three of us used the office regularly anyway.
Closing the office reduced overhead while allowing us to recruit across the region. We replaced informal office interactions with daily video huddles, weekly team calls, one-on-ones, and regular strategic sessions.
ECMA also maintained a storage room whose monthly rent exceeded what many artists pay for an apartment. So we emptied and closed it.
A $65,000-a-year contract for a four-day program
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Reducing the Board’s free ride
Serving on the ECMA Board is a volunteer position, but it traditionally came with a generous package: full conference registration, VIP access, and five nights of accommodation at the host hotel. Altogether, it cost the organization more than $20,000 each year. Meanwhile, many of the artists actually performing at the awards show and conference weren’t provided accommodations at all.
I have enormous respect for volunteer board members and the time they contribute. But given the financial issues and funding cuts the ECMA was facing, the level of expense was no longer justifiable. I proposed to scale this back in 2025 to better reflect the organization’s needs and financial reality, and to redirect more resources toward artists.
I also scheduled governance meetings, planning sessions, and member consultations during ECMA week so that, if we were paying to bring the Board together, we actually used the time productively.
An untouchable $20,000 contract
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Why did I bother with all this?
None of these decisions were particularly exciting, and none made me popular. But I had been hired to make ECMA financially sustainable. Debts were accumulating, the model wasn’t working anymore, and artists were sinking dangerously low on the priority list.
In my view, there were no sacred cows - not the awards, not the event, nothing. Because my mantra was: are we using our available public funding as effectively as possible to provide the most value possible to musicians and music workers?
But when I questioned an entrenched contract or opened work opportunities to competition, folks bypassed management and went directly to the Board.
When I tried to reduce costs, I uncovered profound internal disagreements about what ECMA was actually for.
Before long, I was removed.
So if the story now is that ECMA’s financial problems are the fault of the CEO who spent ten months trying to cut unnecessary spending before being fired eighteen months ago...
...well, you have a sense of smell, right?
I wonder what it would take for a new organization to form and effectively replace the ECMA, and to properly fulfill the mandate of supporting Atlantic Canadian musicians? (An incredible amount of initial groundwork and funding)