FUNDRAISING

by William F. Baker

This subject, while it seems difficult and nuanced, is in many ways the easiest to master—to raise funds, you just have to ask! It may not be as simple as “ask and ye shall receive,” but it’s a sure thing that if you don’t ask, you won’t receive. It is amazing how many people stew about asking for financial assistance, don’t do it, and then say they are having difficulty getting support. Why does this happen? The answer, of course, is that most of us find it hard to do. We feel like supplicants or think for some social reason that it’s not right to ask directly for help.

In fact, though, most of our requests are not for ourselves but for a greater good in which we may be the creator or a principal participant. That’s important to remember. The request is not for you! It’s for something that will enrich the lives of others in society.

To succeed at something as complex as fundraising takes some understanding and discipline. But mostly, it requires your authenticity and passion for the subject, as well as some hard work. Many arts professionals I know spend the majority of their time in their early years raising money. It’s a serious and time-consuming enterprise. Know that if you’re going after a career in the not-for-profit performing arts world, fundraising is part of the bargain.

I spent many decades in the commercial television business and never thought about the subject of fundraising. I did spend a great deal of time doing business deals and promoting and selling our services to other broadcasters. But fundraising as practiced in the not-for-profit world was the furthest thing from my mind. In fact, when charities approached me for donations, I was sometimes bothered and didn’t understand the need (maybe because it was never well explained).

When I changed careers and got into public TV, my world changed. Now the shoe was on the other foot and I had to get support for our operations. I was very frightened at first of the prospect of asking others for money and worried about my ability to make it happen. But I was under pressure to raise millions of dollars, so I had no choice but to get about it. The welfare of my staff and my whole organization depended on the gifts I had to solicit. Luckily for me, I was not starting a small, entrepreneurial charity, so I was blessed with considerable resources at the station and some great teachers. I also had the public television brand to precede me into every one of my fundraising interactions, which was a huge help.

My first break came when our major gift fundraiser set me up to meet with a wealthy, generous man who loved our work. He really wanted to join the board. I told him we’d be honored to have him on our board but needed some help. I asked, “Would you be willing to give us a $1 million gift?” (Of course, you shouldn’t ask someone for $1 million if he doesn’t have it. Prospect research is always one of the first steps in fundraising.) He said yes, and that gave me the confidence to go out and raise more large gifts. I have been credited with raising $1 billion for New York’s PBS station during my 20 years there, but that happened only because we had a great product and a great support staff. Without that foundation, my efforts would have fallen far short of what they eventually achieved. I’ll never forget that first big gift, though. It was a cause for celebration and a wonderful confidence builder, as you will see when you get whatever amount feels like your first big donation.

One of my very best fundraising teachers was Larry Lynn, who became my VP of development at New York PBS, having recently come from the senior fundraising position at American Ballet Theatre. (His essay on fundraising appears later in this chapter.) Larry was a great teacher about the art of fundraising. He made it clear that while he could provide the tools and understanding, in the end, major fundraising had to be done by the head of the organization—who is the one person who has the positional platform, the operating control, and the vision that major donors require. Top donors usually don’t want to hear from fundraisers. They want to speak directly to principals in the organization, who can assure them of how their money will be spent and have the leadership abilities to make an organization thrive.

So be careful if a “professional fundraiser” comes to you and suggests that she can raise money for your organization if you hire her. First, you should know that, while not illegal, it’s considered unethical for a fundraiser to operate on a commission basis (taking a percentage of the money raised). Second, in small organizations, it rarely pays to have a salaried fundraiser. The additional money raised is usually consumed by fundraising overhead and salaries, leaving little left over to benefit the mission.

In a small, nonprofit arts organization, the fundraising responsibility falls in the laps of the performers and the director. In many ways that’s good, because you have a chance to develop and nurture the connections that may enable you to grow the donations, as you’ll sense what givers are really interested in. And once you get over your fears of asking directly, you’ll find that it’s an adventure to win the gifts, make worthwhile things happen with the money, and share your successes with your donor! It pays as well to share your failures—you have to be honest with everyone who is willing to donate to your cause. If you are authentic and truthful about your work, you’ll be amazed at how much tolerance donors have for failure. If your relationship with them is open and honest, they’ll know from you how hard you are trying. Sharing failures with your funders can actually be a source of strength, because they are often eager to share their opinions about how your organization can make changes to be successful. Those with the resources to make major donations also tend to be people with incredible connections that they are often willing to make on behalf of your organization, which can be just as valuable as contributions of money.

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Both for-profit and nonprofit organizations have boards of directors. For both types of organizations, this group of people is often the key to success or failure. Why? In for-profit organizations, board members supply strategic guidance, select the CEO, approve budgets, make connections with other businesses, and help the CEO keep the business focused. In nonprofit businesses, they do much the same, but with one key difference. They are usually the lead and major financial supporters. In nonprofits, the board’s main role is to “give or get!” This means that they either have to give a certain amount of money, or go out and get it. This doesn’t mean the board can ignore the general creative and business function of your company, but the money issue is paramount. As artistic or executive director of your own organization, you probably don’t need creative or artistic help at this point (though a willingness to listen to others, especially those willing to support you, will never steer you wrong). What you really need is money! This is not all bad. Many founding board members are excited about seeing their money and their efforts help create something new.

To reiterate, when you ask for money you are not begging for money for yourself. You’re asking for the economic resources to make something wonderful happen for society.

The ideal starting board size is around ten people, but any size will do. In the beginning, a small board (between five and ten) is easier to handle and manage. Large nonprofits often have huge boards, sometimes more than 50 people, because of the high demands of fundraising. Finding these board members is often a challenge. Some individuals who are willing to support you may not understand or want the responsibility of board membership. Be careful of “inbreeding”; that is, avoid having family members on your board. Don’t get frustrated when you have trouble locating new board members. Find an excited, wealthy, and experienced leader to be your chair, and he will help recruit the others. You might worry that your board could become a purely social enterprise—an excuse to party and have fun. I wouldn’t worry about that. There’s nothing wrong with socializing as long as the mission is not compromised and the tail doesn’t start wagging the dog.

All the issues I have outlined must be carefully thought through. Ask friends, family, and trusted professionals for advice.

The ideal board has a chair who is a powerful, wealthy, or highly connected and well-regarded person who brings in her friends and stays out of the director’s creative hair. Such persons are out there and can be found. That’s why developing a network of your own is so valuable. You’ll likely be able to do this if you work hard and are patient.

An alternative to what I have suggested is a “pure board” of top professional people who have the expertise you need and care about the mission of your charity—big-name musicians or dancers or actors who are willing to lend their names and offer advice to your organization. Of course, this would be wonderful. Many times, however, such people are too busy to attend meetings. And despite their wealth, they are rarely eager to part with their own money. So in all likelihood, you will still need a wealthy chair who is prepared to donate or has friends who will. It can be easier to get such persons if your board is peppered with big, credible talents.

Items related to boards of directors include liability insurance, without which you will not attract senior people; suitable meeting locations and facilities, which often can be borrowed from corporations for free; and legal assistance. Lawyers can be very expensive. There are lawyers, though, who are willing to donate their services to cashstrapped worthy causes, and that’s what you need. Incidentally, they also make good board members!

There are organizations in some communities and at some law schools that have not-for-profit help divisions to work with worthy start-up charities. All should be investigated when you are looking for the best people for your board.

FOUNDATIONS

Foundations are a traditional and trusted source of funds. We’ve all heard the names of the big ones: Gates, Ford, Carnegie, MacArthur, Mellon, and others. Don’t pin all your hopes on support from major foundations at the outset, as there is a long line of more mature organizations in front of you. But it’s never too early in your career to start trying. Remember the example of Claire Chase (see Chapter 7), recipient of the most prestigious and famous foundation grant of all, a MacArthur “genius” award? It took three years and a string of 44 rejected applications before she won her first grant! To get started, consult foundationcenter.org and guidestar.org. Both are good, free sources of information and important data about foundations and how they give.

Every foundation has its own giving criteria. You can’t ask a foundation that gives money for medical causes to fund your dance company, for example. You have to do your homework and ask the right foundation for the proper gift. Each foundation usually has its particular manner of accepting requests for funds. Some do not accept requests at all. All this needs to be researched using the aforementioned websites and other sources. It’s best if you have a chance to actually meet program officers in your field to get advice and insight. (These are people with expertise in a given field who advise the foundations they work for on where to direct grants.) But sometimes cold applications work fine, too.

Don’t get discouraged if your early attempts don’t bear fruit. I’ve found about a 10 to 1 ratio of rejects to acceptances for grant applications. Your chances greatly improve if you know an officer or board member at the foundation. There are big advantages to asking local foundations to support local causes, since they have a commitment to the local community and often realize the power and importance of the performing arts to their area.

With foundations there’s always a lot of paperwork, so accept it and be prepared for it. After you consult their websites and look them up online at sites like guidestar.org, you need to jump through all the hoops the institutions require. This takes time and effort. Remember that you will have many rejections, so it’s best to ask at a number of foundations. If you succeed, you will have to follow up with a report about how you spent their money.

Sometimes a foundation will give you a “restricted gift,” which is a sum of money that can be spent only in a certain way or on a certain project. Be careful to spend this restricted money as specified (not for general operations), keeping good records about how the money was spent.

Working with foundations can require a large investment of time and energy. Many performing arts leaders spend more than 50 percent of their time working on fundraising! Again, don’t expect fundraising to be anything but serious, time-consuming work. But it’s you, the leader of the company, whom supporters want to deal with, and it’s you who has the vision.

KICKSTARTER AND OTHER CROWDFUNDING SITES

Kickstarter is only the most famous of a growing number of crowdsourcing, or crowdfunding, websites out there. While the process varies on each site, the basics are the same. You create a page for your project that has a pitch, usually a video and some images and text, telling people why they should donate. There might be various rewards associated with different levels of funding. Then people are invited to give over a specific period of time via the site. At the end of the period of time, you have either achieved full funding for your project or not.

Here are some key things to consider if you’re thinking about building a Kickstarter page or something similar for your project:

• 1. Don’t expect the site to do the work of publicizing your project. There are stories of some projects that have gone viral and achieved orders of magnitude more funding than they needed. These projects are the exception rather than the rule, so don’t make having a viral hit your plan. Instead, do everything you can to promote your project in other ways: social media, word of mouth, fundraising events, celebrity endorsements, and institutional partnerships. These traditional ways of raising money are still powerful and can still get you where you need to be.
• It is best to think of your Kickstarter page not as the main engine of your fundraising campaign but instead as a kind of promotional tool that doubles as a donation service. Whenever you talk to potential donors about your project, show them your crowdfunding web page. It will give them something to remember, a concrete way to interact with your project, and also a convenient way to tell others about it.
• 2. Give people a reason to look at your crowdfunding web page. This doesn’t have to be the same as the reason to give money to your project. For example, your project might be a jazz concert series for young, undiscovered composers and players, but your video might be a personal appeal from Wynton Marsalis. People are going to watch your video to see Wynton Marsalis, not because they care right off the bat about your idea, and that’s okay. Find a way to make your appeal interesting in its own right. Consider hiring a copywriter to spruce up the language of your appeal or some pro videographers or animators to make a high-quality video. If you can, get somebody famous to do the talking for you. Be creative in thinking of eye-catching ways to get your message across.
• 3. Seek out partnerships with people and institutions who can help you get the word out. Kickstarter and other similar sites are partnering with institutions to curate online lists of campaigns. For example, as of this writing, Public Radio Exchange has a page hosted on the Kickstarter site listing projects the group likes, including podcasts, radio shows, documentaries, and even a graphic novel. Potential donors who already know and trust Public Radio Exchange are likelier to give money to these projects. Other institutions with curated lists on Kickstarter as of this writing are the Sundance Institute, the Rhode Island School of Design, HotDocs, Yale University, and even the city of Chicago.
• Find a community organization or institution that you think might want to help your project, contact the people there, and see if they might be interested in promoting your project. If they don’t have a curated list on your crowdfunding website, suggest that they make one. And it goes without saying that if you can get celebrities to lend their name, image, or voice to your project, do it. Don’t be afraid to ask anyone and everyone, no matter how famous, especially if what you’re doing is notfor-profit.
• 4. Before you start, have people ready to step in and fully fund you at the 11th hour. Most crowdfunding sites don’t allow partially funded projects. That means that if you don’t reach 100 percent of your projected funding in the established time frame, you don’t get any of the money you raised, even if you are just a little bit short. This can be demoralizing for you and your funders, as well as a waste of your considerable time and effort. The best solution is to have one or more donors waiting in the wings, willing to donate up to the full amount you need at the last minute. It makes everybody else who donated feel better, but more important, it ensures that you get to keep the rest of what you raised. This has become a standard best practice in online fundraising, but it’s best not to advertise that you’re doing it, or else people might not be motivated to give to your project in the first place.
• 5.Consider the scope of your project before you decide if online crowdfunding is right for you. As online crowdfunding matures as a way of raising capital or collecting donations, it is becoming clear that some projects are just too big to succeed in this format. If you’re making a short film, a concert series, or some other small to midlevel project that requires anywhere from, say, $300 to $3,000, experience shows that online crowdfunding works. If you’re trying to fund something that requires more money, chances are you’re not going to be able to attract enough donors to make it work.

John Fox, an Emmy-and Peabody-winning TV producer friend of mine, did succeed in raising $141,000 on Kickstarter for Onstage America, a project that would film outstanding local theater across the country for broadcast on PBS. Fox had the backing of eight A-list celebrities, including Meryl Streep and John Lithgow. The pitch video showed some hilarious banter between superstars David Hyde Pierce and Lewis Black. The project received numerous social media plugs (including one from the theater critic of the Wall Street Journal) and was officially backed by PBS, which is America’s most trusted and widely known media brand. And yet, Fox and his colleagues were only able to raise just over their minimum of $125,000 by the skin of their teeth and at the last minute. Fox says it took a frantic marshaling of every resource he and his colleagues could think of to fund the project. The Kickstarter page was a great thing to show people, he says, but it didn’t do any of the work of promoting the project. That was entirely left to Fox and his colleagues, and they ended up achieving it through good old-fashioned personal networking.

When Fox told a professional fundraiser about his 30-day scrambling together of media coverage, and donations from friends, friends of friends, and celebrities, the fundraiser said, “Oh, that’s a capital campaign, just like one I’d create for a huge institution, just compressed into one month!”

The takeaway for online crowdfunding is this: Think of it as a new, accessible, and potentially useful tool. But be sure your project is the right size, and have support and a backup plan in place before you begin. And, if you can, try to have fun with it and learn as much as you can!

FRIENDRAISING

In the end, finding money for your work is basically dependent upon having a network of friends who can give or get. Cultivating such friends is a process that professionals call friendraising. Here are some examples of how it’s done.

Never stage a performance without getting to know the folks who came to see you at the after-event. This is fundamental! Also, solicit email addresses from those who attend your performances. In the process of friendraising, be yourself, be real, and be authentic. You’d be amazed at how many people want to meet you. Even the richest, most powerful folks are always amazed and impressed with people like you who exhibit great talent and discipline. They wish they could do what you do!

It takes time and great creativity to find places where you can meet people who can help you. The good news is that they are out there, and not just in the big cities. Every community has people of means who might be willing to lend their support. Often, attending the fundraising events of larger, mature performing arts institutions is a good place to start building your network. It might seem hard to just walk up to strangers and introduce yourself, but don’t worry: You don’t have to ask them for money right then and there. On a first meeting, you are just trying to connect. You can talk about the event, and the guests are likely to ask you about what you are doing—a great chance to get them interested in your project. And don’t forget to listen. Performing arts events attract an interesting crowd. Make an effort to learn what people’s interests and abilities are. You might meet a potential donor who isn’t interested in what you do but could support the work of one of your friends or colleagues. The more people you know, the more you are in a position to make good things happen for everybody, not just yourself, and that is the true secret to long-term success and a greater level of happiness and fulfillment in your career. When you build your own network of friends and supporters, you are also supporting a larger, interconnected network that is bigger than just you and your projects. When you have a chance to help others, listen to that voice inside you that says it’s worth the time and effort to do so.

Above all, don’t get discouraged. In your search for water, you will end up digging dry holes. Again, have fun and learn a lot. There are many nice, interesting, and generous folks out there. You will connect with the right ones, given time.

EVENTS AND GALAS

Inevitably, someone will say you should have a fundraising event or party. But it’s not always the way to go. In fact, even the most sophisticated charities sometimes do events that end up losing money. You must be careful of the big costs of gala events: drinks, food, invitations, and facilities. Conversely, events can be a terrific way to network. So this area is quite nuanced. Sometimes throwing your own event is the right move, and sometimes it isn’t. It all depends on your goals and where you are in developing your organization. And not every fundraising event has to be too lavish. In fact, if you’re a new organization specializing in experimental performing art, for example, a lavish or traditional event might not be what people expect. So, when deciding whether to throw your own event, you have to factor in costs versus your fundraising goals, potential side benefits like networking or press coverage, and the public image of your organization that you want to put out there.

Sometimes collaborating with another organization or a venue can give you many of the benefits of throwing an event without having to shoulder all the hassle and costs of doing it on your own. For example, a restaurant might be having an opening or an event and you can trade a small performance for visibility and a chance to circulate. The same goes for galleries, retail establishments, or other charitable institutions that are outside the arts, like hospitals and medical groups.

An important thing to think about is some basic accounting—the difference between gross and net. This is critical. Gross means the entire revenue for the event—all the money received at the fundraiser. Net means the money left over after you pay all your expenses. Of course, you can never be certain in advance of any net income! A mistake even big charities sometimes make is to think only about gross. You hear people working at a big symphony say they had a gala and made “a million dollars,” when that is the gross and not the net. Often, fundraisers publicize gross income without accounting for how much it cost to generate that income. Typically, the amount left over is about 50 percent of the gross. So watch event costs carefully! Don’t make commitments with event fundraisers unless you have an escape route to cancel the event without penalty if things start looking too expensive. Don’t make nonrefundable advance payments for the rental of facilities unless you are absolutely sure you’ll have enough people coming to your event.

Homes of board members are possible sites to consider. Often, wealthy board members are eager to have parties in their own homes and to highlight their charitable interests. The board members pay for the event, so any donations are almost pure profit.

Keep your antennae up for unforeseen costs and difficulties associated with fundraising events and galas. Many times, it’s hard to get people to an event when there are so many worthy causes and events competing for the time and attention of wealthy individuals. That’s why it’s best to have the correct folks on your board so they can use their powerful networks and relationships to get your work in front of the best people.

So that’s my take on fundraising. I’ve been credited with raising a great deal of money, but like all team efforts, I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants. For example, Paula Kerger, now president and CEO of PBS in Washington, D.C., was my VP of development at WNET, New York City’s PBS member station. She was brilliant and very strategic and had been head of major gifts for the Metropolitan Opera.

The person who got me going in fundraising and gave me my best training was Larry Lynn, a sophisticated fundraiser who worked for American Ballet Theatre, NYU Medical Center, and other charities. He’s the very best in my opinion. Larry, who is now a top consultant, shares his thoughts with you in the rest of this chapter.

TIPS FROM LARRY LYNN, A PROFESSIONAL FUNDRAISER

If you’ve turned to this chapter, I congratulate you on your fortitude, courage, and determination. Over the last 44 years, I’ve raised money for a broad spectrum of organizations including ballets, hospitals, medical research organizations, higher education, public broadcasting, museums, social services, groups supporting the disabled, and many more. Without qualification, raising funds for the performing arts was by far the hardest.

Before we go further, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I started my fundraising career in the early 1970s at a service organization that was home to innovative dance, theater, and music groups, including some of great fame like Alwin Nikolais, Murray Louis, the Open Theater, the Living Theatre, the Manhattan Project, the Gene Frankel Theatre Workshop, and Multigravitational Aerodance Group. I served on the board of directors of the last one for many years, and it gave me great perspective on what the other side of the table in fundraising was like. I ran fundraising at American Ballet Theatre (ABT) during most of the years when Mikhail Baryshnikov was artistic director, from 1979 to 1987. I have also been an unpaid adviser or compensated consultant to several small dance companies. In this section I discuss two of the three kinds of performing arts organizations. The first are presenting organizations like the Kennedy Center, the Adrienne Arsht Center, and the Roundabout Theatre. You can call these presenting/producing organizations because most of them do both, but here I call them presenting organizations. The second type are content organizations, like ABT (my home for eight years), the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Paul Taylor Dance Company, American Conservatory Theater, and so many more (thank God). The third type are service organizations like Theatre Development Fund, Alliance for the Arts, and Business Council for the Arts. Here, I deal with the first two. Service organizations are the hardest to raise money for, for reasons that will become obvious.

Sometimes these distinctions become blurred. The Metropolitan Opera is both a presenting organization and America’s greatest opera company. When the opera is not performing, the Met goes into its presenting mode, its venue offering the works of American Ballet Theatre and many content providers. ABT has performed as a Met Opera presentation for 40-plus years every spring. So you can look at the Met two ways: It is an opera company that has its own house, and it is a presenting house that has its own opera company. Lincoln Center, where the Metropolitan Opera House is located, is rife with blurred distinctions. It is a presenter of certain programs, like the Mostly Mozart Festival, but it is principally a landlord that leaves the producing/presenting/ performing to its tenants, referred to as “constituents,” like the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, Film Society, and Lincoln Center Theater.

Each of the three different types of performing arts organizations described above has its own strategic advantages and disadvantages, and understanding what they are—and capitalizing on that understanding—is the essence of what we are about to discuss. Before we go into it, though, it’s important to understand the principal sources of contributed funds.

FUNDING SOURCES

The superficial distinction most people make about funding sources includes individuals, foundations, corporations, and government. To simplify, there are two categories of individuals: those who make major gifts, and those whom we call “members,” who make modest, renewable gifts. I am not treating foundations as distinct from individuals. In a discussion of performing arts funding, foundations behave like major gift individuals, except for their penchant for paperwork. The giving of a foundation to the arts reflects either the interests of the founder or the enthusiasms of the current trustees and/or senior staff. I am not going to spend much time on corporate giving since so much has already been said on this topic; a quick history lesson suffices.

I began my career in the early 1970s. Back then, corporations routinely made gifts of a purely altruistic nature. That changed in the 1980s for two reasons. First, the pool of money available for donations was drained away by the higher salaries of executives and by the debt resulting from mergers and acquisitions activities. Second, there was a growing obsession with what American Express coined “cause-related marketing.” Corporations increasingly saw funds given to charities as an extension of their marketing budgets. This was not a brand-new idea. Texaco had sponsored the Met Opera radio broadcasts for years, and PBS had enlisted ExxonMobil and others as “underwriters.” Transactional funding (i.e., the expectation that companies would receive a marketing boost or other favors in return for donations) had always been there, but it exploded in the 1980s.

This gave performing arts organizations an advantage over many other types of charities. We all began to “sell” whatever we could, e.g., open rehearsals, galas, national tours, city engagements, and direct marketing programs. The sports world provided a template that many of us followed for corporate naming opportunities. Of the two types of performing arts organizations described above, the content organizations had glamour and star power on their side. The presenting organizations had glamour as well, and the added benefit of a fixed venue. ABT had two big successes in the 1980s with corporate sponsorship. For three years, we had Moët Hennessy sponsoring our galas across the country to promote its Dom Pérignon brand. We also enlisted Movado in our city-by-city marketing efforts. The chair and founder of Movado joined the board of trustees, and this relationship continued for many years.

INDIVIDUAL GIVING

The heart of performing arts fundraising is individual giving. Let’s begin with what I call the “first premise”: They don’t support you if they don’t consume you. This is not true of all charities. For example, people support health charities, veterans’ organizations, social services, and others without consuming their services. When was the last time you directly benefited from the American Red Cross or the Salvation Army? When it comes to higher education or religion, we tend to support those we have a stake in. With the performing arts, you are highly unlikely to get a gift from someone who hasn’t attended at least several performances. The more frequently they attend, the more likely they are to support you at some level.

When I first arrived at ABT, I came with a strong background in direct mail fundraising. The list brokers (businesses that trade in lists of addresses tailored to meet marketing needs) had snowed the ABT staff into renting the lists of Town & Country or Forbes magazine subscribers or purchasers of expensive cars. The theory was that rich people were more cultivated and more likely to support the ballet. This is not incorrect, but simplistic and costly. These lists consistently returned very little; the poor results were disguised by much better results from lists of ticket buyers that we traded for. At the time, ABT visited nine cities each year, presented by local performing arts venues like the Kennedy Center, the San Francisco Opera, and the Met Opera. We wrote it into all contracts with presenters that we were entitled to an electronic file of all single ticket and subscription buyers for our engagement, and we rented lists from them of attendees at other dance presentations. Our results soared.

Finding modest gift donors is easy if you are a good steward of your own attendance lists. Engaging and keeping them is the real challenge. At ABT, we offered two perquisites that were the bedrock of engagement and retention, and neither cost us significant dollars. First, we conducted one or more open rehearsals in each tour city. Donors of $40 and more could reserve two seats. We used dress rehearsals for this member benefit. These rehearsals would go on for hours, and donors felt they had gotten two free tickets in the orchestra to a performance for the cost of their membership. The second bedrock benefit of membership was advanced mailings of single seat and subscription tickets. Donors had a two-week window of opportunity to buy their tickets for our upcoming season before we opened up reservations to the general public. If you check the ABT website today, you still find these two bedrock benefits; the minimum price has changed to $90, but it’s been 30 years since we bumped it from $35 to $40.

MAJOR DONORS

The first premise applies emphatically with major donors: If they’re not already sitting in a seat, you are unlikely to convert them. Yes, there are rare exceptions, but this is a 99 percent valid premise, so please don’t contact me about the exceptions. I’ve seen them close up. Most of the exceptions were once removed from an ardent fan, like a sibling, parent, or romantic companion. Let’s deal not with the one-percenters but focus on the 99 percent.

The best place to find them is among current donors and ticket buyers. Today, at least a dozen vendors offer wealth screening services that allow you to run your lists of donors and ticket buyers against their database of wealth. The result is a list of your consumers with lots of financial data appended, like large stock holdings, real estate values, the size of their 401(k) plans, yacht ownership, and plane ownership. I’ve used these services with lists of anywhere from 5,000 to 400,000 names. They definitely work, but they are not perfect. Somehow, certain very rich people find ways to stay off these lists.

There are simple ways to develop major gift prospect lists on your own. Back in the 1980s, ABT was an early and aggressive adopter of computerization. We would take the Met Opera’s ABT season ticket list and transpose it into a spreadsheet program. We would then sort by zip code and isolate some of the region’s best, starting with the Upper East Side, the lower half of the Upper West Side, and New York suburbs like Scarsdale, Bedford, Great Neck, and Lawrence. We would get granular with street addresses, isolating, say, Central Park South. We extracted the lower numbers on Central Park West and the lowest numbers on the Upper East Side’s numerical cross streets. If you don’t know Manhattan, this means we isolated those who lived between Central Park and Lexington Avenue—the heart of the famed Upper East Side. We would even isolate specific buildings, usually famous New York co-ops like the San Remo or 850 Park Avenue.

Once we had the list of suspected wealthy ticket buyers, we would share the list with our board’s development committee and the board as a whole. We gave each board member who lived in an apartment building the names of other tenants who turned up on our list. Through this primitive database marketing strategy, we were able to expand our major donor base quickly and substantially. It also helped us identify potential new board members.

The best way to engage a major donor is a two-part strategy. First, whenever possible, use a peer connection to begin the process. Wealthy individuals are more likely to give when asked by another wealthy person. Part of it is a reciprocity thing; they will turn around and solicit your board member for their favorite charity. Another part of it is social connectedness. If you have a board leader other wealthy people want to connect to, one easy way to do so is to become involved in his favorite charity. At ABT, we had the chair and CEO of PepsiCo as our board chair and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as our honorary gala chair. Every advertising agency, investment bank, and law firm in America wanted a piece of PepsiCo’s business; I don’t think I need to elaborate on the star power of Mrs. Onassis. You may be reading this in some small city in the middle of America and feeling helpless about your own circumstances. Don’t! Every city, town, and village has its own version of Mr. PepsiCo and Mrs. Onassis. It’s your job to identify and engage them. Sometimes you get to create your community’s version of Mrs. Onassis. (That’s the beautiful thing about New Money.)

The second part of engaging a major donor is deploying your artistic leadership. If you are unwilling to play a major role in fundraising, my advice to you is polish up your résumé. Some artistic directors are natural fundraisers. But others—especially those who are actively engaged as a dancer, musician, choreographer, etc.—feel they have done their part already, and fundraising is beneath their dignity. But you are kidding yourself if you think the rich people will overlook the eccentricities of an unsociable artistic director and will remain engaged purely because of their love for the art form. At some point, the artistic director needs to embrace potential major donors, or else they will find someone of similar stature who is more welcoming.

During my ABT years, we were not the only major dance company in New York City. I’ll tell you a story about another one without identifying it by name. The company’s artistic director, a formidable choreographer, would tell ABT’s artistic director that he was so important he shouldn’t have to play the fundraising game. He insisted he would never let himself be so engaged. How did the company get around this? The artistic director’s partner in their company was a great man, and he (as I came to understand) had persuaded the artistic director that the people who made major gifts to their company were the artistic director’s personal friends, not mere philanthropists. The artistic director had lunch and dinner regularly with the major donors. Often, they would bring friends along who also happened to be major gift prospects; however, in the artistic director’s mind, these were his friends, and these social occasions were not about the money. But they were, of course.

Presuming you have a willing artistic director, it’s your job to coach and direct her. You need to make sure she’s gotten a short biography of the prospect. Since you presumably know what performances the prospect has attended, it’s your job to make sure the artistic director knows that as well. Once the major donor is engaged, it’s your job to make sure the artistic director sends a personal thank-you note for every gift, and a birthday card wouldn’t hurt either. Of course, they are not really “friends,” but it’s your job to create a “virtual friendship.”

Here are some of the engagement strategies that worked for us at ABT. We knew what performances major gift donors (and prospects) were attending, and we knew exactly where they would be sitting. We would call them in advance and ask if they’d like to go backstage during one of the intermissions. I always had a development staff person in the house, and one of us would fetch the major donors at the beginning of an intermission and escort them backstage. We had explained the reasons for all of this to the dancers and tech staff, and they were most accommodating. We would always alert the artistic director as well. Sometimes, we’d invite major donors to stay backstage for an act, having cleared this ahead of time. (It’s one thing to have extra people backstage during a pas de deux, and another thing entirely during all of Act II of Swan Lake.) Dance lends itself to this more than theater. With theater, donors want to see the play from the audience. Dance lovers, however, often see the same production more than once, so the rare backstage observance of an act is appreciated. In addition, with theater, I’ve found that actors are especially chatty after the final curtain and that donors enjoy a leisurely backstage tour at the end of the performance of a play.

Another effective strategy played out during our galas in each tour city. Wealthy people buy whole tables, but filling them is often a chore. We asked donors if they’d be willing to set aside two seats for members of the company. We had a 90 percent success rate placing dancers at tables. We chose carefully; the biggest donors and prospects got the principal dancers. We learned, though, that the donors found even the least experienced corps de ballet dancers completely charming. Dancers, actors, and musicians are all great with donors, and I found they appreciated being included at these events, even after a long day of rehearsals and performances. We even had success seating some of our senior tech people with donors.

One last thought about using performances for fundraising: If you have decent free tickets, be generous with foundation staffers and corporate giving people. It’s always better if you offer before they have to ask. In a similar vein, if you have to paper the house, drop a stack of tickets at the local business, medical, and law schools. Your successors will thank you someday.

PLANNED GIVING AND ENDOWMENTS

Planned gifts are a way for your members and modest donors to make substantial lifetime gifts through a variety of trusts and annuities, as well as wills and bequests. Presenting institutions are more likely to succeed at planned giving because of the appearance of permanence. One of the coauthors of this book, Dr. Baker, and I once called on an investment banker and proposed he give a gift of $5 million to WNET. He told us he’d have to think about it because when he thought of gifts of that magnitude, he envisioned hospitals, universities, and libraries. What they all have in common is real estate. In the mid-1980s, ABT almost went under during a prolonged labor dispute. While it was playing out, we in the administration thought about what ABT really was and how fragile it could be. We rented a warehouse for sets and costumes, rented a rehearsal space, and owned the rights to a few dozen ballets. That was it. It’s much harder to raise endowment funds or solicit planned gifts when your existence, no matter how august, is so insubstantial.

If you are a content organization, it is still worth trying to get things endowed. Use the higher education model of named professorships for positions like your artistic director, principal dancers, resident choreographer, first violin, conductor, principal pianist, and so on. Create named funds for ongoing functions, e.g., the New Choreography Fund, or the New Composers Fund. Look at what you already spend money on year in and year out. Repackage these into named funds, multiply the annual cost by 20, and you have an endowment proposal.

If you have a permanent venue, any wall, door, or space that doesn’t have a plaque on it represents a fundraising failure. Every seat in the main theater should be named for someone. Somewhere prominent there should be a board or plaque for people to honor deceased loved ones. No grand piano is complete without a little brass plaque. It is the fashion accessory that says you, the fundraiser, are doing your job.

Consider everything nameable. When I ran development at NYU Medical Center, a donor asked if he could have his name on the hospital elevator. One day, I was crammed in it with a dozen other people, and I looked up at the polished brass plaque and smiled. It was probably the most frequently read plaque in the entire hospital. I went back to the same donor and got him to take a second elevator.

A WORD OR TWO ABOUT BOARDS

Boards are the best thing that happens to the arts fundraiser. Here’s the catch: You have to manage them, not the other way around. When I first arrived at ABT, I asked the chair of the nominating committee how the process worked. He told me there wasn’t one and asked if I had any suggestions. I offered to staff the committee, promising to provide them with a steady supply of prospects. At the time, we had great leadership, including Mr. PepsiCo, Mrs. Onassis, and some soon-to-be legendary Wall Street people; however, we also had a lot of legacy deadwood.

My staff began trolling the subscriber and gala attendee lists from all over the country. We had a number of objectives. First, we wanted one “anchor” trustee in each of the annual tour cities, places like Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Second, we wanted New Yorkers capable of making really large gifts. Since our studios were in Manhattan and we performed at the Met Opera, donor cultivation could be year-round and efficient. We not only fed the nominating committee a list of targets of opportunity but also developed a comprehensive scorecard for current board members.

Based on this scorecard, the board leadership, with our gentle direction, developed a set of criteria for board membership, including a minimum annual gift, the purchase of a gala table in at least one city, and the understanding that there would soon be a capital campaign, and at that time each board member would be expected to make a onetime special gift. Over the next three years, we weeded about a third of the board, but we replaced them with people who could give and get effectively. We also established strong gala committees in each of the target tour cities. When I left ABT after more than eight years to go to WNET, board development was my proudest achievement.

A UNIQUE BUT WORTHY CHALLENGE

It’s really hard raising money for the performing arts. It is easier to raise funds in other areas. For example, it was easy when I was raising funds at NYU Medical Center for wheelchair-bound children and disabled vets. In public television (a challenge in itself), we owned our own television station, the glamour and visibility of which is a gift to fundraising at every level. At NYU Medical Center, we had rich old men with prostate and heart disease, as well as a steady stream of grateful patients of every stripe. When I consulted in higher education, we had alumni who had enjoyed probably the best years of their lives during college, and they had a vested interest in keeping the college brand strong. At ABT, we had that narrow sliver of people who loved the art of ballet, and only a sliver of that sliver had lots of money. When I was interviewed by the board chair for my job at NYU Medical Center, I had already met with the staff. He asked me how NYU’s development office differed from ABT’s. I told him that at ABT, the CFO would periodically come bursting into my office and inform me that if I didn’t come up with another $100,000 before week’s end, we couldn’t make the dancers’ payroll. He laughed and offered me the job. Performing arts fundraising is about high stress and very long hours. I would leave the Met Opera after a performance and catch a train that would get me home before midnight, then return to my desk by 9 the next morning because that’s when the board members would call. But when that curtain went up for the first act of Swan Lake and I felt I was truly a part of that moment, it was all worth it. It still moves me to think about those days.

KEYNOTES

Questions to Ask Yourself

• • Do I know anybody who might be willing to be on my board of directors? Is there anybody in my network with skills, connections, or means who might be willing to help, or help me find others who are?
• • Is online fundraising right for my organization? Are there certain projects that might be the right fit for an online campaign, while others might be too big? Is there a person with experience in online fundraising whom I can consult?
• • Do I keep an email list of people who attend my performances? Could I be putting this to use for fundraising purposes?
• • Are there any naming opportunities in my organization? (Regular activities, like annually scheduled performances, newly commissioned works, or educational activities, can all be named after individuals who or organizations that agree to fund them.)

Tips

• •When asking for money, be assertive but don’t be aggressive. Being assertive means that you are open and unambiguous about your intention to seek support. Everybody appreciates having a clear sense of the intentions of the people they’re working with. Being aggressive means being overly confrontational and pushing your needs and desires at every possible moment. While an aggressive approach may win you a gift or two, it is unlikely to create positive, long-term relationships with donors.
• • Never forget that when you’re asking for money, even for an organization you may have founded and currently head up, you are not really asking for yourself. You are asking on behalf of the art you make and the audiences and larger community who are enriched by it.
• • When looking for help for potential board members or those with legal and accounting skills (or those who might fulfill both roles), be sure to check out the professional schools and associations in your area. Law schools and business schools have clinics that are designed to give professional students real-world experience. Some, like the law clinic at Fordham University, even have specific programs devoted to helping people in the arts. Professional associations can also help get the word out that your organization needs assistance.
• • Curious to know where to start looking for funding? Attend the performance of an established local theater, dance troupe, or musical ensemble and check the program to see who supports them.
• • If you are looking for suggestions for making up your start-up board of directors, in this chapter, we’ve talked a lot about the ideal board members to supercharge your organization. But nobody is going to have that right out of the gate. Whom should you start with? Consider asking:
  • −Somebody who cares deeply about what you do
  • −Somebody who has a lot of ties to the community
  • −Somebody with means (a polite way of saying “somebody who’s rich”)
  • −Somebody with skills you need, like public relations, law, or accountancy
• •Never go to a fundraising meeting empty-handed. Always have a brochure, a business plan, a stack of glossy postcards, or even a link to a Kickstarter page or your home page (bring a computer or tablet with you so you can show off the page in the meeting) to show that your idea is for real and is already unfolding in the real world. People are much more willing to support work already under way than an idea.

Exercises

• •Practice making “the ask.” Asking for money can be an uncomfortable thing to do. You have to have a sense of when the moment is right, and you have to be able to gauge the temperament and interests of the potential donors you are working with. Depending on your level of access to potential donors, you may have only a few or even just one chance to ask for contributions. You want to be prepared enough so that you can be relaxed, authentic, and in-themoment during your meeting, not worrying about what to say or how you or they are going to respond. So take a friend or another person from your organization and rehearse making the ask. It might seem a little silly, but have fun with this exercise. Put in some time to try out different approaches, and listen to what sounds good and what sounds bad when you say it.
• •Pick a foundation and take a look at its online resources, as well as at information about the group offered on sites like GuideStar. Most major foundations have multiple areas of grant-making activity that are presided over by officers with expertise in that area. Take a look at past grants the foundation has given. Read the director’s bio to learn what her interests are. Foundation directors have a major say in where the resources of their organizations are directed. Take a look at any resources the foundation offers for free to potential grantees or to nonprofits that work in its grant areas. Foundations often have excellent pages full of useful Web links for potential grantees or that are just offered for the benefit of the public. And if, in the course of this exercise, you have questions that the Web cannot answer, don’t be afraid to email a program officer or somebody else at a foundation with questions. It could be the start of something big!