20 May
2014
20 May
'14
3:33 p.m.
Something I've heard over the years is that people like to give to winners,
not losers - if I give to you will your organization fold soon? That might
be an argument for not saying, "We're losing money!" But I think one could
put it less negatively - we're doing well, our family and community talent
dances are doing great, but our expenses have gone up and we need to find a
way to get back in balance. I don't agree that one should never mention
being in the red, but do think it should be in the context of basically
being successful.
I think one could ask for help without talking about losing money - it is
more fun if more people come, we want to grow the dance, dancing goes in
cycles - we've been down a little the last couple years so it is time to
bring it up again..., we're offering a free pass (or two) to members to let
you get those friends who always say it is too expensive to come give it a
try... The leader at one dance series said she brought in new people by
doing a lot of one-night stands and passing out flyers to those who had
just had a good time. Seeing that your flyers get to other kinds of similar
dances - international, swing, blues, English - might get you a few people
since there tends to be overlap in interests. If there are colleges nearby
you could strategize how to get students to attend. See the CDSS pages on
how to get younger/college dancers to come:
http://www.cdss.org/recruit-young-people.html and
http://www.cdss.org/college-starter-kit.html
In terms of paying more for membership, I think it would be reasonable to
talk about how things had gotten out of kilter and with expenses higher
there needs to be a readjustment. Whether you do that by cutting back the
number of dances covered or increasing the fee or switching to a system
that instead of membership allows you to buy a semester or annual pass that
contains a discount from normal fees (but not as much as your current
membership) or ... Talking with people informally may give you a sense of
whether they feel prices are already too high, or a great deal, and what
would hurt most if you have to raise something.
Making things work financially is a problem for almost all of us. Good luck!
David
On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 5:36 PM, Emily Addison <emilyladdison(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Hi Chrissy and others!
Chrissy - I really liked how you phrased the question re 'Breaking Even'.
My questions from last week on sound and membership relate to this issue.
Ottawa was in the black for quite a while but then we wanted to up what
we paid talent and sound and our numbers didn't follow as we were expected
(we had been seeing a trend). Thus, back to strategizing on breaking even.
:)
Re breaking even, one strategy we have been using in Ottawa is membership.
(http://www.ottawacontra.ca/view/?membership). Our main motivation was to
create a sense of belonging/ownership over the dance and get our regulars
really committed so they would come as often as possible and spread the
word. That's worked nicely but what's happened over the last 5yrs is that
we've upped the number of dances that they can get discounts at but we
haven't upped the membership. So we're looking at that.
Like Mac, we've been looking at our various dance programs/series together.
The interesting thing is that when we started both a Family Dance and a
Community Talent Dance series two years ago, we thought that they would be
'money losers' and that our Saturday night dances would help fund those
series. However, it's been the Saturday night dances that haven't been
financially viable. Thus, it's great to hear how NYC works its funds with
the regular dances not breaking even - thanks for sharing David.
***ONE FOLLOW UP QUESTION***
Last week, someone on the list said that one strategy to deal with a dance
series that was loosing money would be to let the community know and ask
the community to be part of the solution. I brought this idea up with one
of my fellow organizers here in Ottawa and they were pretty adamant that we
shouldn't tell our dancers that we've been in the red the last two years.
We do have an annual AGM that is open to anyone who dances and they can
learn about our finances there.... this person just didn't want to
publicize the information widely.
What are folks' general thoughts about letting the dance community know and
calling for support (in terms of getting more dancers out; paying more for
membership; etc)????
Emily
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