Michael: You are welcome, and I do appreciate your cordial acceptance of what was offered to work with your own impressive experience. Twenty-nine years of them doing things their way will have many of those things still OK to do. But the true weaknesses and lapses in the theater’s management can, with your counsel, be seen and accepted for the changes needed. You’ll be adept, I know, using the technique which will have them make the needed changes and believe that they thought of the initiatives themselves.
Let me have a few last words for now. No need to respond, as you certainly have much to do, and you will indeed do it in time. But a few of your comments especially caught my attention.
(1) Yes, do continue to look for names of prospects from other organizations’ donor lists, especially for Senior-related organizations---and certainly all of the area’s arts & culture organizations. And though modest at the start, do initiate that Annual Fund Membership program.
(2) While we cannot cite an “ideal” number of Board members required/desired for any organization, we can with assurance say that four are far too few. Good for the theater to work on this. But, you will have the President do the recruiting, I am sure. Chances are, with your experience, the leaders there will want you to recruit other leaders, but we know that will not work. Development staff should never recruit the leadership. Though you are semiretired, and part-time, and for what is apparently a labor of love for you, nevertheless, you still work for the Board. As we know, staff recruiting them, in effect, has it just the other (undesirable( away around.
Depending on just how low-level those willing executives are, keep alert to the “business buzz” regarding the ones whom are thought to be up and coming. Today’s low-level executive could be tomorrow’s CEO. And there is nothing wrong with accepting Board members not yet in touch with your mission and wanting Board experience. That’s a great opportunity for you to take such willing volunteers under your theater’s wing and give them plenty to do while learning to connect to the mission and becoming active and producing Board members. However, we do avoid as diplomatically as possible, any executive who is pressed/pressured/forced into Board duty by his or her boss. They invariably look for ways to get out of things.
(3) “Skittish,” they are not, I expect, when it comes to their artistic reach with performances and other services which attract attention and provoke thought. So it does not compute that they are reluctant to seek to tap the first line of possible and sensible support. All any of those Seniors can do, when asked for their money with care and courtesy, is to say “no.” As the well-worn, but appropriate truism goes, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
Just ask the ED and the Board, “If those we serve and benefit are capable of giving anything, why should we not give them the opportunity?” Followed by, “If we can’t expect support from them, why should we expect it from strangers to our theater?”
Have those theater folks come out of the wings and take center stage as they must.
Best fund-raising wishes,
Tony
Tony Poderis
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