Houston Symphony Turns to Fundraising to Help Make Up for Lost Ticket Sales

The last few months have been a roller coaster ride for the Houston Symphony. When the pandemic canceled the end of the orchestra’s 2019-20 performance season, fundraisers launched a relief campaign that raised around $1 million from board members. Some foundations made large gifts, and the orchestra saw a strong response from its mid- and lower-level donors — supporters who typically give $25 to $5,000.

But by the end of May, “people were getting a little tired of the relief requests,” says Nancy Giles, chief development officer. “It dawned on them that we were all going to be stuck for a while and things weren’t going to be normal for a good long time.”

So the orchestra took decisive action, in part because it knew it wouldn’t return to business as usual anytime soon and because more donors had turned their giving toward pandemic emergency-response and racial-justice causes. It slashed $11 million from its $36 million budget. About $5.5 million of those cuts came from layoffs and other personnel related cuts. “That’s the orchestra business,” Giles says. “It’s all about people.”

Initially, staff and musicians took a pay cut, but eventually 29 positions were eliminated — three of them on the fundraising team — and pay was further cut for remaining staff. Other pandemic facts of life have also reduced costs. “Because of travel restrictions, we don’t have guest artists and conductors and other artistic expenses that we would normally have,” Giles says.

Slow Return

Throughout the tumult, the music has continued. Weekly livestream concerts bring music to the homes of both loyal patrons and new listeners. In May and June, musicians performed live from their living rooms. Starting in July, they returned to Jones Hall, the orchestra’s performance venue, to livestream performances each Saturday.

Gradually, the orchestra began to allow small groups of people to attend the livestream concerts in person to test safety protocols for an eventual reopening. “We’re bringing in small groups each weekend and growing that until we can have our capacity back in the fall,” Giles says. Even then, capacity will be 600 instead of 1,500.

Once that happens, the plan is to start by inviting subscribers who’ve already paid for season tickets. The orchestra won’t sell single tickets, Giles says, but she hopes that will come later when the organization can increase the size of the in-person audience.

“We always did well getting donations from single-ticket buyers with the Houston Symphony,” she says. And that’s important. “Without having single-ticket buyers, the donor pool is much smaller.”

Tickets to the virtual concerts cost $10 versus the $50 the orchestra would charge for an in-person experience. The loss of revenue from ticket sales has led to a greater reliance on philanthropy, Giles says. In a normal year, the organization brings in about two-thirds of its revenue from donations and the remaining third from ticket sales.

But despite her concerns about the future, Giles feels a sense of cautious optimism. “So far it’s been better than I expected,” she says. “Right now, I’m 50 percent ahead of where I thought I would be with bringing in cash for the summer.”

Out-of-State Supporters

The orchestra is seeing growth in new places.

About 15 percent of the people who tune into the weekly virtual concerts are doing so from outside Texas. It’s not uncommon for people who are connected to the symphony to continue supporting the organization even after they move out of Houston, but the watch-from-anywhere concert format is giving the symphony access to new listeners and supporters.

When people buy their $10 tickets, a pop-up window asks them to consider adding a contribution to the cost of their purchase. “About a third of people each week make a donation,” Giles says. That adds up to an average of $4,000 to $5,000 a week.

Many are making a donation each week. “That’s really great data mining for us,” Giles says. Once the new listeners are added to the orchestra’s files, the group will start reaching out to them. “For some, that could be a larger ask, and others we’ll just put into our unmanaged annual-fund portfolio,” she says.

That work will help the group continue to broaden its donor base, something fundraisers have worked toward over the past few years.

The symphony has always relied on its major donors, and that remains the case, despite some recent challenges.

In Houston, some big donors are feeling the sting of the economic downturn. Many of the area’s large donors work in the energy industry. When the pandemic hit and the price of oil crashed, some faced layoffs and decreased their charitable giving, Giles says. And yet despite the travails of the energy industry, when it comes to making up for the significant gaps in revenue, she says, “it’s the major donors who are going to have to see us through.”

The symphony typically hosts three black-tie events each year, including the annual ball in May, which was canceled this year. The opening-night gala in September won’t be the usual dinner dance. Instead, patrons who would typically buy a table can have dinners delivered to their homes. People who feel comfortable are invited to watch the concert in person.

Year-End Worries

In addition to annual-fund appeals, the orchestra typically does two large fundraising campaigns each year — one at the end of the calendar year and the other at the end of the fiscal year, which coincides with the conclusion of the symphony’s season in May.

“Performing-arts donors tend to give at the end of the season, which is very, very challenging when you live hand-to-mouth,” Giles says.

For the year-end campaign that kicks off later this fall, the message will be perseverance. Appeals will explain how the orchestra has become an industry leader in live online concerts. The orchestra will talk about its education and community-engagement programs, which have continued to reach people online. Musicians have serenaded patients virtually in Houston hospitals and seniors who are otherwise isolated, for example. In August they held two Zoom sessions with refugee teens assisted by Catholic Charities, in which the teens talked about music from their culture. Musicians then learned the music they discussed and performed for the teens in a second Zoom session.. “It’s a very positive message of pushing forward,” Giles says.

Despite that positivity, she’s worried about how the election might affect patron attention going forward.

Four years ago, as the presidential race was heating up, Giles was the development director at Houston’s Alley Theater.

“Things were normal other than what was going on in the political world, and people were pretty exhausted,” she recalls. “They were tuned out, but the nice thing was they were coming to the theater and the concert hall to get away from those things.”

But not this year. As long as the concert hall’s door is shut for so many audience members, she’s concerned there will be too much noise competing with the symphony’s online offerings.

On the one hand, major donors are home, and they pick up the phone when a fundraiser calls to check in. But, she says, “people have been very emotional. This is really wearing on them, and it’s hard with moving into this election cycle now.”

“They need the arts more than ever,” she says. “I just hope that we can we can break through and reach them.”