Syracuse Symphony needs $375,000 to keep operations going

Syracuse.com reported on the fiscal crisis facing the Syracuse Symphony, which has continued to face funding challenges each year. As the article relates:

Arthur C. Brooks knows orchestras. He played French horn in the Barcelona Municipal Orchestra. He wrote his 1998 dissertation on the economies of symphony orchestras, including the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra as a model for surviving financial crises.

He looks at the current crisis facing the SSO, which needs to come up with $375,000 by Friday to meet February payroll and expenses or it will close, and he sees a familiar problem. “The wolf is always at the door financially for midsize orchestras,” said Brooks, now president of American Enterprise Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. Brooks is an expert on philanthropy and nonprofits and a former professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

Brooks, who called himself a “delighted listener” of the orchestra when he lived in Central New York, considers the SSO “a good orchestra,” the best among the four Upstate. And he says that lackluster gift-giving for nonprofits is “not necessarily a reflection on bad management.”

For arts organizations in the same predicament as the SSO, Brooks outlined several strategies that can have an immediate impact:

• A combination of special fundraising events and a series of benefits, which often “will work in a pinch.”
• Aggressive cost-cutting. By doing so quickly, the situation can be turned around, although not easily.
• Finding a big investor, someone to bail out the organization.

He said now is not the time to introduce new programming initiatives. Those strategies are best to pursue when the SSO is in better shape. “What you’re trying to do now is to get from now to March 1,” he said.

The goal for an arts organization, Brooks said, is “voluntary price discrimination. Which is a fancy way of saying of getting people to pay more than the ticket price for the SSO, by sending in more money than the ticket price.”


View full sizeMike Greenlar / The Post Standard, 2010Syracuse Symphony Orchestra music director Daniel Hege conducts at SSO's Fourth of July concert at Chevy Court on the state fairgrounds in Geddes.
And Brooks said the fundraising target is pretty clear. “You never try to raise (money) from someone who doesn’t love your product and who doesn’t attend your concerts.

It can be done, he said. He noted the SSO focused on a combination of raising revenues and cutting costs to solve a crisis in 1991-92, when poor finances forced the early end of its season. “After 1992, they did smart things to cut costs when they needed to,” he said.

A changing audience

Thomas Wolf also looks back to 1992, for a different reason. That year, Wolf released a report, “The Financial Conditions of Symphony Orchestras,” for the League of American Orchestras.

“The problems weren’t all that different back then,” he said during an interview from his office in Cambridge, Mass. “People can blame the economic downturn, but I think we’re looking at some basic, fundamental, long-term issues with performing arts and trends of changing audience behavior.”

Wolf traced some problems to the second half of the 20th century, when organizations created year-round employment for musicians but did not conduct market analysis. “A lot of their growth was not demand-driven,” he said. Orchestras were playing to half-empty halls.

He also cited figures that 76 percent of subscribers and 71 percent of single-ticket buyers studied music as children. “With a whole generation of disinvestment in arts education, it’s kind of inevitable that it would impact demand,” Wolf said. “We are dealing with a population that if you haven’t been exposed to it, why would you be interested in that kind of thing?”

SSO fundraising strikes chord

Since announcing its precarious financial picture last week, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra has shifted its energies to its public fundraising campaign, “Keep the Music Playing.”

The symphony has asked for the public’s support to raise $1.75 million to continue its 50th anniversary season. The SSO needs $375,000 by Friday to meet February payroll and expenses, and $445,000 to cover the budget for March.

As of Monday afternoon, the organization had received 431 donations, ranging from $5 to $2,000. There also are some “five-figure donations” pending, said Vicky D’Agostino, SSO director of communications.

The SSO will not release the total yet, because it wants the public to focus on its $1.75 million fundraising goal and not the smaller amounts needed immediately, said D’Agostino.

SSO interim Executive Director Paul Brooks said last week that cost-cutting measures were being examined. The musicians already have made salary concessions of $580,000 and could be approached again. There is no negotiation under way, but an “initial dialogue” has begun about the third year of the musicians’ contract, said D’Agostino.

Jon Garland, a SSO French horn player and representative of the bargaining unit for the musicians, declined to comment. He said he is abiding by an agreement with management to not publicly discuss the situation. Garland said the musicians continue to work with management for ways they can help.

Board members have been dispatched to speak with prospective donors. Several community groups and schools have organized impromptu fund drives. Donations are being accepted by telephone (424-8222), online at www.syracusesymphony.org or by mail at Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, 411 Montgomery St., Suite 440, Syracuse NY 13202.

Wolf sounded cautious about the outcome of fundraising efforts, based on his study of the San Jose Symphony. He was co-author of a book, “And the Band Stopped Playing: The Rise and Fall of the San Jose Symphony.” “Certainly, a lot of funders have become impatient with Save Our Symphony kinds of campaigns, because they happen on a fairly regular basis,” he said.

In San Jose, “it was one time too many,” said Wolf. Residents believed that would be the end of symphony music in their city. But, a year after it filed bankruptcy, the San Jose Symphony re-emerged as a leaner operation.

Promising signs

Jesse Rosen, president of the League of American Orchestras, sees several promising signs in the early days of the SSO’s latest crisis. He points to the unified response by SSO management, board chair and musicians, in writing a letter to the editor outlining their goals.

“That, in itself, I think, is an important ingredient to building confidence, gaining confidence in the leadership of the organization, good alignment,” Rosen said during a phone interview from Miami Beach, where his organization’s board was meeting.

Rosen said it’s important for the SSO to show its leadership with an “accumulative record” of hitting targets on its road to recovery. Beyond its financial rebuilding, he said the SSO must build relationships with stakeholders in the organization’s future, thereby creating more allies. He also stressed forging creative partnerships and referred to the SSO’s performance at the premiere of Paul Taylor Dance Company’s “Brief Encounters” in November 2009.