Where Does the Money Come From?
Ticket sales, grants, individual
donors, the college, corporate sponsorships, tax dollars, student fees,
government arts agency, concession and merchandise sales, foundations, and any
stone left un-turned.
The McAninch Arts Center (MAC) is
considered a medium sized performing arts center based on the metrics used in
the Urban Institute analysis of U.S. arts presenters The Capacity of Performing Arts Presenting
Organizations. For fiscal year 2012 the MAC operated a $3.1 million
budget. For the purposes of accounting and this discussion we split that number
into Educational Arts Support ($1.09 million) and Arts Presenting ($2.02 million). The former represents our
support for student productions, concerts and exhibits in Music, Theatre, Dance
and Visual Art, the latter is our public face, work we create (symphony and
theatre ensemble) and work we present (artist series, art gallery, school
series, community engagement work), all for our community. The support for
student work in the arts is supported by academic mission of the college and
funded through tuition, student fees and tax dollars. Our challenge is to make
the other side of the coin work – what the college calls an auxiliary function
of the institution.
So how does this subsidiary of the
college operate? In fiscal year 2012 the MAC spent $2.02 million on the
non-academic side. This number is split $1.49 million of earned revenue and
$530,000 of subsidy from the College of DuPage.
 |
| MAC 2012 Revenue |
Add that $530K the College provided
the auxiliary side of the MAC to the $1.09 million the College puts out to
support student performance and exhibition in Theatre, Music, Dance and Art and
COD spent $1.62 million on arts and culture last year. Absent from these
numbers are facility and utility support (custodial, grounds, engineering,
heating, cooling, electricity and water). For the mid-sized, community
college-based performing arts center there are three primary sources of revenue
1) earned income (ticket sales and alternate earned income sources), 2)
contributed income (fundraising, grant, endowment), and 3) support from the
host institution. The MAC breakdown is 64% - 10% - 26%.
How do we manage if the College
subsidy goes away? Reduce costs, increase revenues, grow audience, change
programming, develop alternative revenue sources,… the list goes on and every
arts administrator can recite it. Keeping with our theme, where does the money come from, we can easily answer where it does not
come from. Reports from Kelly Barsdate, Steve Lawrence, Reina Mukai and Holly
Sidford respectively in Grantmakers in the Arts: GIA Reader
and National Center for Responsive Philanthropy:
Fusing Arts, Culture and Social Change left me with these points:
1.
Grant dollars for the performing and visual arts
have steadily decreased over recent years.
2.
Median grant size ($25,000) has remained
unchanged since 1993. When adjusted for inflation the median grant has
decreased.
3.
State and local arts funding has decreased in
recent years precipitously, minus 39% and 20% respectively. The MAC has seen a
70% decrease in Illinois Arts Council support.
4.
Small to medium sized arts organizations receive dis-proportionally fewer dollars than large arts organizations, 2% of
organizations have budgets greater than $5 million but they receive 55% of
dollars donated and granted.
If we’re waiting for foundations,
grantors, the government or big corporate donors to come to the aid of medium
to small performing arts centers we should not hold our collective breath.
Community colleges are late to the
philanthropic table. While our counterparts at four-year universities have been
raising money for decades our little arts organization just began making an
organized annual appeal for donations six years ago. Our center does not have a
fundraiser on staff nor does it have an advisory board with give/get mandate.
We do not have a strategic planned giving program for the arts. We have never
really asked our patrons to step up in a big way. We always assumed that the
institution would take care of us. They always have. We historically ran
deficits that were annually excused until three years ago when the College
added the number up and it totaled $2.2 million accumulated over approximately
a dozen years. That is a sobering number. If the MAC had to ask its patrons to
make up a $500,000 annual shortfall it would mean increasing our annual giving
by almost 800%.
We’re pretty good at
generating dollars through ticket sales ($1 million plus annually). We manage
to provide an eclectic mix of music, theatre, dance and visual arts experiences
that our community is willing to pay for; however, if we had to survive totally
on generated revenue what would that mean? There is art we put on the stage and
in the gallery that without subsidy in some form would never see the limelight.
Our Dance Series, New Philharmonic, and Buffalo Theatre Ensemble are three
examples. Should the free market determine what art is available to a community
or should it be part of the mission of a community college to provide its
constituents with arts experiences they otherwise could not provide for
themselves?
This leads us next to mission and
programming. If you have questions, answers or disagree with something I've said, I hope you’ll comment. I promise to engage with you respectfully.
Be well,
Stephen
