April 17, 2007 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Two East Coast arts organizations “are right now engaged in a familiar sort of public brinkmanship, with a distinct odor in both cases of “‘save us from ourselves”’,: writes Paul Botts on his blog dot-org
Mr. Botts is a program officer at the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, in Chicago. He makes clear on his blog that none of his postings necessarily represent the views of the foundation.
One of the organizations featured in his posting is the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey — a once-robust suburban theater company whose membership has fallen by more than 50 percent during the past 20 years.
Making matters worse, Mr. Botts writes that the organization has done a poor job of soliciting charitable contributions to offset its dwindling membership income.
“It’s hard to see that as anything but seriously negligent in a society where per-capita individual contributions for the arts quintupled after inflation from 1964 to 2004,” he writes.
The story is different at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. But the crisis is similar.
The center opened in October but is already on shaky financial ground. Mr. Botts says the center cost about $500-million to build but is operating without an endowment.
Making matters worse, he says the center’s planners overlooked some key details.
“Almost no on-site parking (in South Florida??), and the operating budget didn’t include the cost of stagehands?,” he writes. “Clearly no one with any experience running any actual arts centers (or hell, any actual service-sector business of any kind) was in charge of the planning on this thing.”
How should these organizations — and others like it — take steps to thrive? Have other groups found creative ways to attract donors and patrons in the face of significant financial shortfalls? Click on the comments link just below this posting to share your thoughts.
