The Art of Cultural Institution Fundraising

[abatt]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/11/arts/the-big-ask.html?ref=arts

I have only glanced at this, but it is an interesting, in-depth look at the art of fundraising and important donors.

I got a big laugh out of the section regarding naming rights for the bathroom.

[Helene]

Seattle already did the naming rights for the bathrooms at, if I'm remembering correctly, Consolidated Arts. Seattle Opera was very clever to put signs on the Ladies Room stalls at the Opera House before it was gutted, where there were four stalls for the entire top tier (maybe 14 in total for all tiers, all one one side), which made crossing the narrow lobby to race to them after the first act of Gotterdammerung a contact sport. The fundraising signs advertised "96 Ladies Room stalls are planned for McCaw Hall!"

But I love this man for this:

“I want both the Met and the Whitney to have a major piece of New York real estate that is unnamed,” Mr. Lauder said in an interview, so if a “donor comes along and says, ‘I would like to have it named after me,’ and writes a check, both museums will be better in the long run.”

[sandik]

Seattle already did the naming rights for the bathrooms at, if I'm remembering correctly, Consolidated Arts. Seattle Opera was very clever to put signs on the Ladies Room stalls at the Opera House before it was gutted, where there were four stalls for the entire top tier (maybe 14 in total for all tiers, all one one side), which made crossing the narrow lobby to race to them after the first act of Gotterdammerung a contact sport. The fundraising signs advertised "96 Ladies Room stalls are planned for McCaw Hall!"

At the press conference, every other slide in the power point show was about the number of stalls for women.

I just wish they'd let us do naming for individual stalls -- my sister and I would have loved to donate in memory of our mother, who could really hustle up the aisle when need be...

[Birdsall]

A good friend of mine who is in her 80s actually sent emails to the entire board when the opera house was being renovated demanding "potty parity" and Jenkins called her a name in a "reply all" email forgetting she was among the receiver and he had to apologize profusely and promise to make sure they would add more stalls for women!!! So she might be the reason for the issue being taken more seriously.

[DanielBenton]

I'm really enjoying this thread! We were at the Kennedy Center Opera House to see "Beautiful" last week. I noted 12 urinals in the men's room. Every one of them could be a naming opportunity

[sandik]

A good friend of mine who is in her 80s actually sent emails to the entire board when the opera house was being renovated demanding "potty parity" and Jenkins called her a name in a "reply all" email forgetting she was among the receiver and he had to apologize profusely and promise to make sure they would add more stalls for women!!! So she might be the reason for the issue being taken more seriously.

Whatever the circumstances, I'm very grateful to your friend, and to everyone else that made an effort to get that addressed when they renovated the hall. It makes an incredible difference.

[Jack Reed]

Friends in the architectural profession say they have known for a long, long time that women need 3.9 times as many places in theater restrooms as men, but the Harris Theater here in Chicago was the only one anywhere known to me that approximates this number. In the past, I was surprised by the irrationality of the men's room places on different floors of the New York State Theater - the same number on each floor, even though the Orchestra has several times as many audience seats as each Ring (or balcony).

On the earned-income side of it - as distinct from the contributed-income side - McCaw Hall's ticket-price categories are the most complex I've ever seen since I noticed prices starting to reflect where people actually like to sit: Time was, theaters offered three prices, for front, middle, and back sections, right across the house, in each level, about ten in all; but a year ago I found 17 price categories in all at McCaw, with concentric zones on the seating chart reflecting desirability. Like restroom parity, this too makes a lot of sense, in contrast to some venues - Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, Symphony Hall in Phoenix - where unpopular sections are simply closed off, though I've never seen demonstrations of how that might maximize total receipts.

(I posted both paragraphs before I read the Times article - now I see it's not so clear the topic is raising money for overall operations - the total budget - I guess - but mainly for building construction, what somebody can put their name on, so my second one is a little OT, but the article's a good glimpse into how what we love happens.)

Edited October 13, 2015 by Jack Reed

[sandik]

McCaw is a complex hall, and is a very different experience if you're there for opera or for dance. But yes, the seating chart/ticket zone choices are difficult to navigate unless you already know the hall.

They had a big open house when they first opened, and my sister, who was still working box office for the opera, wandered around the house with me and sat in several seats in each zone. Very illuminating.

[Helene]

I've never been in the Men's rooms at McCaw Hall, but from what I've been told, there are four stalls plus urinals. If anything, they built a great number for women and possibly a better ratio for men than suggested. I can't remember the last time I spent more than three minutes on line.

McCaw Hall also has two sections that I've never seen in any other house, Gallery Lower and Gallery Upper that ramp from even with the Orchestra to the first tier up, the front rows of which, the Dress Circle, are the Met's Grand Tier, although in Seattle, Dress Circle isn't segregated from the riff-raff. The two sets of side balconies are mostly fixed and forward-facing -- there are no loose-chair scrums in the boxes for sightlight real estate -- which is unusual as well.

The Main Floor price breakdowns are comparable to many houses that don't have continental seating, but multiple sections on each floor -- a prime section in the front middle, different breaks depending on how far they are to the side -- but the biggest complication comes from the way seats in the Second Tier, the highest floor that has five discrete sections, are priced, because pricing is based on a combination of how far forward and how far center. NYCB used to have three price breaks in Fourth Tier: Rows A&B, which are physically separate, and then the last three rows were cheaper than the bulk of the Fourth Tier.

Subscriptions are more complex, because of the Mandatory Contributions tacked onto some sections and blocks of seats (prime) in others.

[Jack Reed]

Actually, I meant to praise the McCaw seating price structure, bringing it closer to the ideal of giving people what they pay for, not to complain about navigating the chart. (I remember studying it for the first time last Fall and thinking the choice of colors made the patterns pretty!) The traditional, old style may have had some kind of rationale, but it tended to result in the side seats of a theater going empty at the same price as the center ones that were filled - not speaking of McCaw, but from old personal experience in general and well east of the Mississippi. No, I meant to hold the McCaw chart up as a good example of how to do it.

Thanks for your comments - one of the benefits of posting here is that it helps me to write better. I think.

[abatt]

Friends in the architectural profession say they have known for a long, long time that women need 3.9 times as many places in theater restrooms as men, but the Harris Theater here in Chicago was the only one anywhere known to me that approximates this number. In the past, I was surprised by the irrationality of the men's room places on different floors of the New York State Theater - the same number on each floor, even though the Orchestra has several times as many audience seats as each Ring (or balcony).

Jack, the State Theater actually has two ladies rooms on the orchestra level, and one men's room on that level. All other floors have one men's room and one ladies room. Given the fact that the fourth ring is now closed for almost every performance, the smart money is to take the elevator up to the fourth ring where the restrooms are empty and clean.

[sandik]

Thanks for your comments - one of the benefits of posting here is that it helps me to write better. I think.

We all try.

(and yes, the color-coded chart is really pretty)

The only tricky aspect is that the hall has good and bad seats (comparatively) quite close to each other, depending on what you're going to see. Helene has done some great research for dance in that house, and I'm always impressed with her choices.