Structuring Sustainable Success: Building Functional Relationships Between City-Entities and Nonprofit Theatres as a Means for Ensuring Longevity
I am grateful to be presenting my research at the 48th League of Historic Theatres’ annual conference in Milwaukee alongside my colleague and CEO of the Jefferson Center in Roanoke, VA. The strength, quality, and functionality of the relationship cultivated between a city-entity and a historic venue is paramount to longevity. While this research-driven discussion will be especially helpful for those operating, stewarding, and/or programming in a city-owned, historic venue, it is a broader conversation about sustainable enterprise agreements and their impact on long-term financial planning. This session will include current models of city-entity embeddedness, challenges affecting historic building maintenance, and the level of local government underwriting needed to support the arts.
The theaters researched for this presentation have various relationships with their local city government when it comes to financial support and city budget integration. Theatrical nonprofits that are housed in city-entity owned venues are generally achieving a fiscal surplus when robustly supported by their local governments. These support mechanisms include ongoing operational, managerial, renovation, and/or maintenance funding assistance. Conversely, the nonprofits that hold a deficit on their end-of-year balance sheet are stewarding continual renovations on the historic venue. City-entities as responsible property owners of their historic venue’s infrastructural needs will not only help preserve their cultural, community treasure for future generations, but will grant the nonprofit arts organizations functioning within them the ability to deliver on mission rather than fracturing their focus on costly restoration projects.
In an era of waning donations, structuring a historic venue’s relationship with the local government may be a means of filling the donor gap. This presentation will help provide tools for theatre nonprofits operating in historic venues to build a better fiscal relationship with their local government.
To learn more about this topic and to have free access to our resources, please visit: https://www.jeffcenter.org/