[Organizers] Breaking even + follow up question

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