Brother, Can You Spare $100,000?

Some of you reading this may have already seen the article about the Horse Barn in the Laramie Boomerang a couple of weeks ago (if you missed it, you can see it here).

In that article, I mentioned how I have a fundraising goal of $100,000 to make a year's worth of theatrical productions possible. And now I'm in the thick of it, pulling together a master list of prospects and figuring who to ask for how much.

So, how did I arrive at $100,000? Well, it just worked out that way during the budgeting process, which involved assigning a dollar amount to each and every expense likely to be incurred over the course of the productions. The actual budget for the theater is about $120,000 (OK, $118,500 to be precise). The goal for the first year is to raise $100,000 in contributions and earn the rest through ticket and concession sales.

The expense breakdown looks a little something like this:

Production (68.03%)
$80,614

Production: Personnel (54.53%)
$64,614

Production: Non-Personnel (13.50%)
$16,000

General & Administrative (18.14%)
$21,500

Marketing (8.89%)
$10,530

Facilities (2.11%)
$2,500

Fundraising (1.94%)
$2,300

Other (0.89%)
$1,056

Making theater is a labor-intensive exercise. When you look at the breakdown, more than half of the entire budget goes directly to paying people involved in the productions. And whether there are two or eight performers in the cast, you generally need the same fixed number of people behind the scenes. You'll always need a director, stage manager, lighting, scenic and costume designers, stagehands...adding more performers only incrementally increases the overall production cost.

In my fundraising pitches, one of the things I try to make clear is that much of the money in this budget will be paid out within the community of Laramie. And most of that money will be paid to people. One of the things I'm really passionate about is the ability of cultural organizations to make an economic impact on their communities. This statement from a Wyoming Community Foundation report on the nonprofit sector in Wyoming says it all:

Wyoming nonprofits play important roles as service providers, advocates, and community builders. They strengthen and vitalize our communities. Yet, when Wyoming citizens consider issues of economic development, the economic role of the nonprofit sector is often overlooked. Dollars to the charitable sector make invaluable contributions to the quality of life in our state, but they also make a significant contribution to the state’s economic health. Nonprofit organizations employ Wyomingites, spend money in our communities, invest in equipment and property, and leverage local, state and national charitable resources.

From "The Hidden Sector in our Economy: Nonprofit Organizations in Wyoming" (June, 2004)

Something else I'm also trying to make clear is that the Horse Barn Theatre currently receives no direct ongoing financial support from the state, even though it is located on state property and owned by the state (we have to apply for state grants just like everyone else!). The Horse Barn was converted to a theater many years before the state took over ownership of the park, and the staff there have more than enough preservation and research work to keep them busy without having to program the theater. That's why the Wyoming Territorial Park Historic Assocation took over the responsibility. The state does an excellent job of keeping up the building (a new paint job is on the schedule for this spring, and new floors are going in as I type), but to make the Horse Barn Theatre a successful performance venue, it's going to take the help of funding from many private and public sources.

But I have no doubt this can be done. With the right mix of programming and the right combination of donors, Laramie will have a new cultural fixture by this fall.