Operating Support
ACHF Arts Access
Following a period of rapid growth, the Reif is committed to achieving financial stability. As we offer more programming, our expenses go up. To combat this, we need to find ways to generate more revenue and reduce unnecessary spending. In 2012-2013, we will operate on a balanced budget and meet all budgeted areas by fiscal year’s end. We evaluated this goal by carefully breaking down each budget area with our board of directors, and we used applicable expense reports, receipts, and statements to compare projections to actual totals. We will use this information as we prepare future budgets to make sure our projections are as close to actual figures as we can get them, and we will meet regularly to adjust and refine numbers, as needed, to ensure we are operating in balance. 2: We will expand and build new audiences for quality arts programming in our regional community. Because we believe the arts to be a part of who we are and a defining characteristic of our community, we want to extend an invitation to all persons to take part in an event at our center. To that end, we will increase the size of our patron database to over 14,000 by the end of 2012-2013. We have dedicated software which we use to monitor, track and report all patron activity, donations, attendance, etc., and we used this software to document and evaluate the increase in our overall patron records.
Most areas of our budget came out as expected, but we had a serious decline in ticket sales from the previous year and did not meet budgeted projections in that area. A rash of inclement weather in our busiest part of the year (December-March) caused our projected ticket sales for marquee events to come up short. Because of this, we ended up about $50,000 off our estimated level. We have diligently reevaluated all sales projection techniques and will use this information to create much closer projections for next year's ticket sales. 2: We achieved this goal, with our patron database now at 14,065. We feel this is a reflection of our increased outreach to areas on the outskirts of our direct community, and also a testament to the programming that we are presenting. While ticket sales were lower than anticipated, our extension of free/reduced fee tickets this year helped to introduce many new people to the arts in our area. We feel that this increase will help us create and sustain stronger ticket sales in the future, and believe we are building a stronger base of patrons who will become paying customers in the seasons to come.
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