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Fundraising: Advice From the Trenches
Development directors face an increasingly tough task
these days, but some useful strategies, such as Sneak Peek tours and testimonials,
can help to reduce their stress and raise their bottom line
Behind every successful theatre group is a successful
fundraising program. Whether it’s a five-member company with two productions
a year or a thriving regional theatre center, fundraising is one of the keys
to survival and growth.
This places a heavy burden on development directors, who each year must set
their sights on ever-increasing fundraising goals, often without the tools
necessary to accomplish their mission.
“Most nonprofit organizations run on a never-ending treadmill of hand-to-mouth,
one-year-at-a-time funding,” says Terry Axelrod, founder of Raising More
Money (www.raisingmoremoney.com),
a fundraising consultancy for nonprofits. “The future is predictable
and guaranteed—more treadmill, more running, more burnout, more turnover.
Grants won’t get you off that treadmill. Neither will galas.”
While there is a lot of fundraising theory available, there’s not a lot
of detailed, practical guidance. The best advice comes most frequently from
your peers—people who generously share the lessons they’ve learned
through sometimes painful experience with others in the drama world.
To help, we’ve assembled some tips and success stories from development
professionals across the country that you may be able to use in your fundraising
efforts.
Give Patrons a Peek
According to Axelrod, cultivating individuals and converting them to loyal
donors is vital. “Individuals are key to sustainable funding for your
organization’s mission,” she explains. “Individuals can get
fired up, passionate and inspired about what you’re up to. In fact, they
may already be. And once they’ve been lit up to your mission and the
great job you’re doing, they can stay with you forever.”
A low-key, easy-to-organize event is a great start. Axelrod recommends inviting
ticket holders and other interested parties to a “Sneak Peek Tour”
to introduce them to your program. “It’s a good strategy for turning
ticket holders into donors,” she says.
Axelrod suggests theatres start by hosting a backstage tour on the evening
of a dress rehearsal, followed by a short talk by the artistic director and
an invitation to stay and watch the rehearsal. “The artistic director’s
talk shouldn’t be a plea for money,” she says. “It should be
an insider’s look at what’s going on. He can explain that they’re
about to see a dress rehearsal, what kind of challenges the cast faces with
this play, what he’s looking for in the rehearsal process.”
Later the fundraiser can follow up with each of the attendees, asking specific
questions about that person’s particular interests. “So, for example,
if that person is particularly interested in musicals, you can invite them
to specific events that would appeal to them,” Axelrod says. “Don’t
even mention money during that event. It can take six to nine months before
the fruit ripens to the point where you actually ask for the money. But it
takes that kind of investment to build lasting relationships with donors and
a sustainable fundraising strategy.”
The Power of Testimonials
Carole Ries at the Topeka Civic Theatre in Kansas discovered that testimonials
from people whose lives had been positively changed by the theatre can be
a powerful tool to raise funds, and are often much more effective than her
own written or spoken words.
“The first person who really opened my mind to this way of thinking was
Suzan Zeder, an internationally renowned playwright,” Ries says. “She
gave a 15-minute speech back in 1994 at a reception following a production
of one of her plays. She spoke about individuals, not concepts. She inspired
me, and I began to try to change the way I presented the facts to potential
donors.”
Ries began to look around for testimonials about how the theatre changed someone’s
life—anything from a child actor who went on to act professionally to
the box office volunteer who found a home and friendships at the theatre.
She looked for ways to retell their stories, or for opportunities to have
them tell the stories themselves.
Ries found one, in a young man named Andrew, with whom she was chatting in
the theatre. “Out of the blue, he said, ‘You know, this theatre
saved my life.’ It still gives me chills,” she says. “I asked
him to tell me more. We began using a testimonial in our Stage Door Sneak
Peek, our point of entry in the Raising More Money model [mentioned above].
He gave the primary testimonial—about a seven-minute speech at the 2004
Bravo Breakfast. We raised $328,000 in a one-hour event.”
Since that first testimonial, Ries has tried to include a testimonial at each
event that asks for money, as well as other events that may include potential
donors. Sometimes she asks the source of the testimonial to give a two-minute
talk describing how the theatre changed his or her life; if the source is
shy or unavailable, she has a member retell the story.
“Everyone who speaks, whether at a Sneak Peek or at the breakfast, tries
to convey to the listeners why this theatre is important to them,” Ries
says. “There have been so many times people came to me with tears in
their eyes and told me those kinds of stories, but it took me a while to learn
to ask them to write it down for me. It’s incredibly valuable, but it’s
not easy.”
Whirlwind Tour of Trustees
“The single most important thing we’ve done is pay attention to
our own directors,” says Steve Sorim, director of development and institutional
advancement at Trinity Repertory Company in Rhode Island. “It can be
easy to complain that the directors aren’t doing what they’re supposed
to, but do they really know what they’re supposed to do? Or that they
buy into it? We didn’t.”
To that end, Sorim asked the directors a couple of years ago to rewrite their
job descriptions. They also wrote one document on what was expected from the
board as a whole. There, they set specific fundraising goals for which the
board was responsible, with the guidance of the development department. Then
they broke it down into individual directors’ responsibilities.
“The goals were very specific,” Sorim recalls. “It came to
$10,000 in funds raised per director, although during a subscription sales
shortfall, they raised it to $13,000.”
After setting the budget and fundraising goals, Sorim begins what he calls
the “Trustees World Tour.” Usually in the company of the board president,
he meets with each of the theatre’s 50 or so board members individually
for about an hour to get to know them and talk about the ways they can help
achieve the theatre’s goals.
“Our board members are critical to our success, now more than ever, so
why wouldn’t we spend the time to get to know them?” Sorim says.
“It’s pretty time-intensive during September and October; probably
more than half my time is spent this way, but it’s incredibly successful.
We get to know the board members well, and we all come away with ideas and
energy and commitment. It’s huge.”
Show Them Concrete Changes
According to David Hawkinson, executive director of Chicago’s Steppenwolf
Theatre Company, fundraisers need to demonstrate exactly what a person’s
donation means to the theatre. “If we’re not doing that, we’re
failing as fundraisers,” he says.
The key is making the donation relevant to the theatre and its future. “A
lot of causes are so huge that it’s hard to see how your money is going
to help,” Hawkinson says. “Is my little bit of money really going
to cure cancer or end hunger or stop teens from getting pregnant? With an
organization like ours, donors can see concrete changes that were made because
of their donations. If they don’t see the difference, they don’t
contribute.”
It’s vitally important to get to know the potential donor. “Everyone
involved [in] trying to raise funds has heard the advice: ‘If you want
donations, you have to ask for them,’” he says. “Well, that’s
true. But if you don’t know where you sit with that particular person,
and where your theatre falls on that individual’s scale of priorities,
you’re asking too soon.”
In addition to getting to know your donors’ priorities, Hawkinson recommends
adding personal touches to your fundraising repertoire. “I sign 3,000
or 4,000 thank-you letters a year, and I add personal notes whenever I can,”
he says.
The Steppenwolf Theatre Company keeps a database of donors with notes on each
individual’s volunteer efforts or facts about their personal lives and
interests. “In an increasingly impersonal world full of Pottery Barns
and McDonalds and Gaps,” Hawkinson says, “we can offer something
unique and tangible. The more successfully we do that, they more successfully
we hold a priority in the giver’s perception.”
“Our latest problem is being perceived as too successful,” Hawkinson
says. “Some of our biggest supporters have started thinking we don’t
need the money anymore. We’ve had to get more and more sophisticated
about asking for the money, and making it known that we still need support,
that what looks like success still costs.”
The Humorous Approach
When Sheri Lee Miller returned to be the public relations director of Actors
Theatre in Santa Rosa, Calif., it had just held a disastrous fundraising event—one
that actually lost money. They needed to raise new funds, and quickly.”
“We figured out that if a certain percentage of our mailing list each
sent us $8.08, we would make up the deficit,” Miller says. “So we
wrote a letter asking for eight lousy dollars eight cents from each person.
It was funny, it was honest and people really got into it. People sent in
variations on the theme: $16.16, $80.80, etc. They were very supportive.”
The next year Miller followed up with another humorous solicitation. “We
promised that we wouldn’t do any Shakespeare for a year if they sent
us money,” she says. “It also did very well. Not quite as well as
the $8.08 letter, but still it had a terrific response. With both letters,
people wrote us a lot of personal notes along with the checks, and it was
wonderful. People love to give if you make them laugh.”
“The best fundraisers are often the simplest and most direct,” Miller
says. “But laughter always helps. Leave the tears to those who are dealing
with life-and-death issues.”
For an online conversation about fundraising, please visit the discussion
forums at www.dramabiz.com.
