Nonprofit arts organizations are dropping like flies. Got a problem with that?
You’re 12.
You’re at the park, sitting under a tree, drinking cola out of a can. A wasp buzzes toward you. You get a little startled, but you get up and walk over to a nearby bench, swatting at the air to make sure the wasp doesn’t follow you. The wasp seems curious about your sugary drink, but ultimately leaves.
It flies back to the nest, telling its best buddies that you have something they don’t have.
Ten minutes later, two wasps buzz toward you. You think they just want your soda. You get a little frightened, but you sit still, hoping they’ll go away on their own. They don’t.
Instead, four more wasps show up. Then eight more after that. You run, but they just follow you. Finally, you throw your cola can as far away as you can, hoping they’ll follow it. Some do. Some stay. Your heart is racing. 16 more wasps arrive. They think of you as a barrier to their happiness, not as a disinterested bystander. Hundreds more arrive. Thousands. It’s a swarm.
What do you do?
That little horror story is brought to you by the people that brought you the Loner Angry White Man of the 1990s, the not-taken-seriously Tea Party of the 2000s, the cross-burning We-Didn’t-Elect-A-Black-Man-You-Did republicans of the early 2010s, and now the majority — all those current red-capped folks who believe that the US is just for them because, hey, it says “us” right there in the name.
You’re running a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California.
The population in The City is 850,000, give or take, making it the 17th most populous city in the United States. The unemployment rate is low, about 3%. The median household income is about $142,000. The population of the Bay Area is about 7.8 million people. 4% unemployment. The median income is the highest among all major United States metropolitan areas, at about $120,000.
49% of the population of the San Francisco Bay Area has at least a bachelor’s degree (the national average is 33%).
Your company is in the middle of an area with a lot of educated, wealthy, creative people. And yet you’re just about to close the doors. Why?
As San Francisco Chronicle theater critic Lily Janiak explained in a June 27 episode of KQED’s The Bay:
“So we, in the nonprofit theater world, rely on a model that is really not working for anybody. It wasn’t working before the pandemic. The warning signs were there. Nonprofit theater relies on subscribers and grants to invest in a season before it opens. Ticket sales alone typically supply 50% of an organization’s budget. And there’s a lot of variance in there, but you’re never going to support a theater with ticket sales alone. And so getting someone to decide they want tickets to all six of your shows more than a year in advance, and making up the rest of the difference with increasingly dwindling government and foundation support. That just isn’t working anymore. It’s not penciling.”
It’s critical to notice that she primarily talks about a decidedly for-profit metric — ticket sales.
The Aurora Theatre in Berkeley, long known as a cultural touchstone for the theater community in the Bay Area, is about to close down for good. Artistically speaking, it’s a damn shame. The Aurora is just the latest in a long line of Bay Area theaters closing their doors. California Shakespeare (“CalShakes”), Cutting Ball, Bay Area Children’s Theater, Piano Fight, Theater First, etc. And more are on the way, no doubt.
An educated, wealthy, mobile, creative, and curious populace — all aspects of a community that used to tie directly to the artistic success of a theater company. The San Francisco Bay Area has all of that, and yet its theaters continue to close. Or worse, they go on “emergency” funding drives, as we’ve discussed in earlier articles (and in the book Scene Change) about the Oral Roberts School of Fundraising.
Let’s throw in some other facts. Among symphony orchestras. 90% of first-time audiences are not returning, no matter how good the concert was. Of the 10%, half of those don’t come to a third concert. Today’s customers are more apt to “unsubscribe” to something than to subscribe, relegating the idea of ticket dollars as a backbone of the financial model in shreds.
Why?
While that’s a predictable question, it’s the wrong question. In a world where the swarm of MAGA cult members rule the day, will there suddenly be a renaissance of the nonprofit arts sector based on “excellence” or “artistry”? Before you answer, let me just interject with a quick
It’s going to take special weaponry to tackle the problems created by the current administration. The economy is taking a nosedive, America is even more roundly hated by its friends in the world, and the president is ruling by edict, just like the arrogant, sociopathic king we fought a war against about 250 years ago. And because he’d still win the election if it were held today, he spends his days laughing, yelling, and insanely ranting.
To put it in a way Bogie would understand, it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of nonprofit arts organizations in America don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
But where does that leave San Francisco? For that matter, where does that leave the whole nonprofit arts industry where, in other parts of the country, there are nowhere near as many potential arts patrons? After all, it’s worth noting that KQED, the source of that program, has run a shortfall of $20 million over the last two years and is about to lay off another huge chunk of its workforce. When these cultural wasps attack, it’s not pretty and it adversely affects even those charities that do charitable things. If they can do that, imagine how easy it would be to cut funding from charities who don’t.
The answer lies not in the wringing of hands about ticket sales and earned revenue. It doesn’t lie in most of the back-room discussions about pleasing an audience more, or better, or with less dissonance. It doesn’t lie in the social clubs where Muffy and Chad used to speak often of “civic rent” and place their compatriots in hammerlocks to attend the next gala. And, as we’ve seen clearly now, it doesn’t and won’t lie with the people’s government, where along with national funding rescissions and eliminations, we’ve seen the New Hampshire state budget cut its arts funding to 10% of its previous allocation (and artists cheering that it wasn’t cut out altogether) and the Missouri governor executing line-item vetoes on just about every cultural institution in the state, to the tune of a $300 million buzz cut.
To fight this particular fight, to be obvious, we’ll need fighters with wasp-like cunning and persistence. We’ll need strategies that do a public good that is measurable and repeatable. And then repeat them. And get more organizations to repeat them alongside you. And build, and build, and build. We have to get out of our boardrooms, our green rooms, our offices, our performance halls, and, like the wasp, not stop until we prove indefatigable and inevitable. And, if successful, never stop ever again.
What if your company started announcing that it was now performing in places in your region that get no attention? What if you ask nothing for admission in these neighborhoods because the most important thing is to use art as a tool for them, not as a showcase for you? What if you weaned your company off the poisonous teats of fame, elitism, and a vague search for excellence?
And what if you showed all the other companies how to do it, too? Out of Hand Theater in Atlanta figured that out and is doing exactly that. Why not your company?
Or are you just waiting for some fairy-tale magic to happen all on its own?
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