In New York City we have at least broken even most years overall, except the last couple. However, our dances in themselves, both English and contra, lose money almost every night. This is partly due to our $430/night rent - a bargain in the city. Our strategies to survive despite this: - try to get more people to come - we've offered a free dance, have a couple free passes for members to use to get their friends to come, participated in the New York Dance Parade, have 4X6 and business cards to give out, use Google Ads paid for with a Google Nonprofit Grant, etc. Our admission rates ($15 general, $12 members and students) are higher than most, but necessarily so. - fundraising: a combination of an annual appeal, requests for donations when registering by mail for major events like our Ball, and having a receptacle at the door for donations for specific purposes - for English, the "Third Musician Fund" to help pay for having three musicians; for contra, a fund to help pay for the free dance next year. An "anonymous donor" matches donations to the Third Musician Fund, up to $800/year. - our big fundraiser in the past was a weekend at a camp in the country, which drew lots of people. That also was the venue for an auction that brought in several thousand a year. Unfortunately it got to be too difficult to get people to come to the weekend, so that has gone away, and that loss partly explains our recent deficits. - other major contra events bring in something extra, even though we pay a substantial premium to get well-known bands and split the proceeds with them. The crowds that come (at higher prices) make up the difference and more (and, paradoxically, for a one-time event like this we can use a cheaper hall, a school, that isn't available on a regular basis). - membership - membership fees generate a substantial amount of money - though one never knows for sure whether the net impact is positive, since membership offers $3 off per dance - for those who dance regularly we lose money after they attend 10 dances in a year, but hopefully make it up on those who come only occasionally but want to be in the loop. We also think membership is valuable in building loyalty to our series and a sense of community. - we've gotten two small grants from CDSS to help pay for special programs - our initial musician apprenticeship program (we pay for it ourselves now), and our initial free dance. A big help when considering a new program. Over our many years of existence we've managed to save something which gives us a cushion during bad years. David Chandler Country Dance New York On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 10:02 AM, Chrissy Fowler <ktaadn_me(a)hotmail.com>wrote;wrote: