Morning, folks…My name is Tim, and I am the Artistic Director of The Boomerang Theatre Company, a 12 year old award winning non for profit theatre producing nearly 4 shows a year since 1999. Why give you the background above? Just to let know you we’ve been around this yard a few times. Even with all of the experience producing (44 full productions and counting), one thing is a constant problem: raising money.
You might think an organization with a successful history like ours would have an easier time raising money for productions, readings, stipends, etc. But it isn’t true; we struggle in the same way we always have, in the same way our peers struggle. I think, for a long time, we struggled with the “ask” moment. Because The Ask can feel unsuccessful. It can feel like you can’t solve the equation on your own and like George Gibbs in OUR TOWN, need a hint from Emily lest you show how bad you are at math. Especially in my chosen arena of Off-Off/Indie Theatre.
So what do we do?
Sue Abbott, Managing Director for Boomerang and myself have decided to try and embrace that need. Now certainly we aren’t the first company to come up with the idea of changing “We need money” into “We need your help”. But we are trying to be as aggressive about The Ask as we can be, without alienating our audience.
We are dubbing the campaign “Boomerang’s Fundraising Festival”. The Festival will consist of parties, events, behind the scenes footage, blog posts, photos, trivia, sneak peeks at design sketches, raffles and more. We’re sending our audience an email every Monday with all of this information, asking them to join us and support us as we move through the rest of our season. We want to be active rather than passive, reaching out as much as we can to include people in the shows we do. We feel like the more people know us and the work we do, the more people will want to support us (we are charming and cute, after all). And with that, The Ask becomes not a cry for help based in failure, but an invitation to come along for the ride.
To learn more about Boomerang’s Fundraising Festival, feel free to email me at [email protected].
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