On Wed. night this past week I saw a notification come in from our donor management system. Dr. Kevin Poitras, a long-time Jobsite season pass holder and donor, had finally tipped our needle past the 2017 goal we had set for our Annual Campaign. Ticket sales (because we believe in keeping things accessible (read: affordable) and offer numerous ways for certain groups of people to get low to no cost tickets) can’t possibly pay for all of the things we need throughout the year, including paying for our administrative and support salaries that keep the ship sailing, this website that you’re looking at, and so much more. The Annual Campaign pays for the time and the materials used to submit grant applications to help us pay our artists. It pays for the time we invest in the schools, including planning and preparing study guides.
Thanks to Dr. Poitras’ generous gift, we have until Dec. 31 to make a new goal. At the beginning of the season, Hurricane Irma took a $10,000 bite out of sales for our season opener, The Flick. The money we lost due to those cancelled performances and the lingering damage done as folks recovered was not something we could just “make up” with another show. We managed to raise around $2,500 to cover part of the loss, but the $7,500 impact on our bottom line remains.
We have now set a new goal for 2017, a challenge for these remaining days, of $67,500. If we can make up this loss before the year ends it not only helps us balance our annual budget but it will allow for us to breathe a lot easier in 2018 and will help us avoid making budget cuts across the remaining shows in the season and possibly beyond.
Make a tax-deductible gift today and help us end the year on a high note. We’re now 90% toward our new goal, and every gift is truly meaningful to an organization our size. Your gift will help up reach over 15,000 audience members, up to 5,000 students, and some 60 regional artists who call Jobsite home.
In addition to this need, we also have a very special opportunity to close out the sponsorships we need for our educational programs surrounding The Tempest! Susana and Yann Weymouth have stepped up from the private community, while Healthy Agile LLC has stepped up from the business community, but we still need an additional $1,750 to cover the greatly discounted tickets offered to students as well as up to 200 tickets given away at no cost to students who would not have otherwise been able to afford them and our in-school outreach visits by our teaching artists.
