I had a great meeting yesterday with Ms. Joan Sadler; Joan has been deeply involved with A.C.T. since the very beginning - first volunteering, then serving on the board for many years, including spending several years as the board’s President. She knows what it’s like to be with a company from the ground up, and she had some good insight into how to proceed with our plans.

One thing she mentioned - something I’ve been thinking about for a while now - is that people are much more likely to donate to an project if they can see something tangible that the organization has already done. Some people are willing to contribute based on the strength of an idea, but most want to know that you’ll be able to follow through, and bring the idea to life. I’ve been thinking about this myself, but I wasn’t sure how to scale down our plans to the point that we could do them without major funding; Joan had some good ideas about doing a small project in conjunction with an existing theatre company - possibly in their off-season, so we could use their space and share their resources. Another possibility is to charge the students a small amount of tuition, rent a space for the pre-production/rehearsal period, and then use another company’s theater for the performance.

It would probably have to be a summer program, since we wouldn’t have the resources to sustain it for a whole semester - probably just a 2-3 month program would be best. It’s only been stewing for a day, but at this point it seems like something that should be achievable by next summer. I’m going to start working on a plan, figuring out how we can make it work - it’s kind of exciting to be actually doing something, instead of just pondering funding and nonprofit law!

Donor Power

I’ve recently discovered the Donor Power Blog, written by Jeff Brooks of Merkle|Domain, a company dedicated to helping nonprofits strengthen their relationships with their donors. Jeff talks a lot about empowering your donors - treating them as real people who want to make a difference, not as ATMs; by giving them the ability to see and choose where their donations are going, you can give them a personal connection with what your company is doing, and how they helped make it happen.

That idea really strikes a chord with me - I’ve been striving to get as many people as I can involved in the Drama Farm, because I really believe that the most exciting ideas come from collaboration (after all, that’s part of what the program is about!) So, why not include the donors in that collaboration? Encourage them to contribute ideas, to be involved in the lives of the students and what we’re doing with their generous donations. Make them a part of the Farm!

Adopt-a-Chicken!

So, how’s this for an idea? We figure out how much it will cost to operate the program for one student for one semester - materials, facilities, housing costs, etc. - and then we ask potential donors to give enough endowment funding to sponsor one chicken’s (er, student’s…) stay at the Drama Farm each year. We could even attribute specific rooms in the dorms to specific donors, and give the donors updates on the student that they’ve sponsored for that semester - who they are, what they’re doing - even get them in touch with each other. It could be a great networking possibility for the student, and it would give the donor a form of direct involvement in the program. It might even result in some lasting relationships that could benefit both student and donor in the future…

Standing Out

I’ve also been reading a bit about how to make your organization stand out - how to make it remarkable and memorable - and it seems to me that active donor empowerment is a good way to achieve that. We don’t want to be the same as every other group that’s asking these people for money - something needs to make them sit up, take notice, and get involved. This might be one way to go with that.

Any other ideas?

Anybody out there know anything about how to put together a prospectus? We’re looking to create something that’s snazzy and eye-catching, but also friendly and informative, to send out to people who might want to give us money.

I’ve poked around a bit on the internet and found some vague descriptions of the structure of a prospectus, but my feeling is that no one is really doing quite the same thing that we’re trying to do. Most people who write prospectuses (prospecti?) are looking for venture capital, so they really do have a deal to make. We’re looking for investors, but they’re not going to get a monetary return on their investment - just involvement in a pretty cool project, and the ability to make a difference in the education of future theatre professionals.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far, as it applies to what we’re doing:

3 Parts of a (typical) Prospectus:

• Description of the program - the way you ideally see it working; its mission.
• Bio - who the founders are; their experience and skills.
• The Deal - what you want from the investor; what they’ll get out of the deal.

How does this apply to us?

We’re thinking we’ll want a snazzy folder of some type, with various informational inserts that cover those three broad categories in a variety of ways. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

• Letter - thanking them for their interest in the Farm, and telling them what they’ll find in the folder
• Program Info - description of the concept behind the program and how we plan to implement it
• Facilities Info - description of the facilities we want to create, probably with some photos and sketches or plans
• Staff/Board Info - primarily bios on the people who are working with us now, but also a description of who we’ll be looking for to staff the program once we’ve raised the money to start
• Funding Info - how we plan to fund the program and facilities, along with different ways that they can give us their support (including non-monetary support, like involvement in what we’re doing and spreading the word about the project). We might want to split this one into two - one about our funding plans, and another about how to support the cause?

What should it look like?

The next step is to figure out the design of the thing - the closest thing I can come up with is something similar to the big folder of stuff that schools send to prospective students who they’re trying to attract. I know there are lots of prospective donor materials out there, though, so I’m going to ask around and see if I can get my hands on a few.

In the meantime, anyone have any thoughts? Other content we should be including? Interesting/fun ways to package it, to make us stand out? Any and all ideas are welcome!

Just came across an article on CNN.com about how giving money to a good cause actually stimulates the pleasure centers in your brain.

What better reason do you need? Give us some money - it’ll brighten your day! (There’s a button at the bottom on the right - go ahead and click it!)

I’ve been running into an interesting phenomenon as I talk to more and more people about this project. I start by telling them about the program - where the idea came from, where I want to go with it, how it would work - and I generally get a very positive response. Then comes the inevitable question, “How are you going to fund it?” When I tell people that we want to raise a $20 million endowment to support the whole program, the response is usually “Wow.” or “Okay…”, accompanied by a look that says “You really think you can do that? Keep on dreaming…”

Now, I’m not deluding myself - I know very well that $20 million is a lot of money. But I also know that any goal is achievable, if you break it down into smaller and smaller goals, working towards the Big One. Am I going to run right out tomorrow and stumble across a bunch of millionaires who want to give me money? No. But I can work up to that. Here’s how:

Round One

1. Figure out the Big Goal.
   In our case, raising $20 million to fund an endowment. There’s a capital campaign too, but let’s focus on the endowment for now.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

Becoming a not-for-profit organization appears to be pretty simple. Getting 501(c)(3) (tax-exempt) status, not quite so easy.

For the poor souls out there who haven’t had a course in Everything You Ever Needed to Know about Theatre Management from the fabulous Don Marinelli (founder and head of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center), a 501(c)(3) is an organization that the IRS has exempted from paying taxes, because of their charitable work in education, scientific research, religion, or a whole slew of other altruistic things. Even better, though, is the fact that any charitable donations made to a 501(c)(3) are tax-deductible - is that a great way to get people to give you money, or what?

So, I’m looking into what it takes to achieve tax-exempt status, since we’ll definitely want to do that before we start asking people to give us money. Nolo has a great little online guide to get you started, but it seems that - like everything else - the rules for incorportating and applying for tax-exempt status are a little bit different in California than they are in the rest of the country.

Of course, there’s a book for just that problem, so I stopped by Nolo’s outlet in Berkeley the other day and picked it up. I’d never used one of Nolo’s books before, but I’m incredibly impressed, just from the small amount I’ve read so far - if you’re in the market for a layman’s guide to anything law-related, they’re definitely the place to go.

I’ll post updates here as I glean key pieces of information on starting a non-profit, but for now I leave you with this tidbit: If you’re doing anything that involves legal stuff, and you’re in California, research it very carefully, because everything works differently here. Everything.