Monday, January 16, 2012

Teach me how arts donations work

From The Ethicist:

I was excited to take my granddaughter, Rachel, to see a local production of “The Nutcracker.” But this season, the production was being underwritten in large part by David Koch, a billionaire who supports numerous political causes that I think harm our nation. He also supports many worthy medical, educational and arts organizations, but I think those good works buy the complicity of the institutions in question. I’m sure my granddaughter would have liked to see the show, but rather than validate this patron’s actions and beliefs, I boycotted it. Should those who feel as I do have joined me?


Does the donor get anything out of higher ticket sales? I was under the impression that he's out of pocket the same amount regardless of whether the tickets are sold or not, and I can't see how boycotting would have any impact on him. What am I missing?

5 comments:

B. Hrebec said...

I have no idea about this particular case, but an opera company I used to work with often had "matching" donations, where a donor would commit to donate the same amount as tickets sold. Other times, they would commit to make up the difference between sales and revenue, usually only up to a certain amount. Usually this was done by businesses rather than individuals, though.

I think the idea here is that if attendance is low, the donor will be unlikely to support future productions. If one were to write a letter to the organization putting it on explaining why they weren't attending, I suppose it could have an effect on future donor choice? (It does seem odd.)

impudent strumpet said...

Hmmm...if the donor doesn't support future productions, doesn't that hurt the theatre and not the donor? The theatre's lost ticket sales and a donor, but the donor is out of pocket less than they budgeted for.

Although if the donor is making up the difference between ticket sales and revenue, then they'd be out of pocket more if people didn't attend. I'm not sure if it would be more harmful to the donor or to future productions of The Nutcracker though.

laura k said...

It's not harmful to the donor in any way. It's a personal statement only.

I used to do arts fundraising, a very long time ago. In my day, this was a big issue with Philip Morris, big tobacco, supporting the arts, especially dance, in the US.

impudent strumpet said...

What did the theatres think of this? Did boycotting customers have more of an effect or did big sponsorship money?

laura k said...

Boycotting customers made almost no difference. I'd say no difference, but maybe there was some slight difference I wasn't aware of.

It was an ethical question more talked about than acted on. People who decried Philip Morris sponsorship of the arts were not big art-goers. People who were big art-goers attended what they wanted to attend.

It would come up in conversation. "Anti-smoking campaigns are great, but without Philip Morris we'd have no arts in America!". That's about it.