Fundraise More for Your Community Theater

Donors play a key role in supporting the arts. As you grow your community theatre and introduce the theatre to the next generation, you’ll need to drive more revenue to support productions and educational programs.

You’ll need to build a strong donor community and work with sponsors. We’ll focus on working with donors.

As you work with donors, the most important piece is trust. Donors need to trust that you’ll use their money well and have a meaningful impact on your community. As you establish that trust with updates on programs, shows, and growth, consider the strategies below to further encourage donations.

Create Donor Programs

Donor programs help you build an audience and a reliable income stream for your nonprofit community theater. Lots of people have been influenced by the arts and want to support them in their local community.

Legacy Gifts

Legacy gifts are deferred or planned gifts. Some people want to donate the remainder of their retirement savings, life insurance policy, or annuity after they die. These gifts are helpful for preparing for your theater’s financial future.

One-time Donations & Incentives

Many theaters offer incentives and recognition to one-time donations. These programs often have several donation levels and recognize all donors in each category. Some even include different perks.

For example, you can name all of your donors in playbills. For higher levels, you can offer recognition on the screen in your lobby. 

As far as incentives go, you can include complimentary refreshments at shows, early access, free tickets, rehearsal attendance, lunch with actors, concierge services for tickets, reserved parking, or access to exclusive theatre events. You can even let donors have influence over how their donation is used (e.g. selecting a specific show to fund).

Recurring Donations & Incentives

You can take your donation program even further by creating a club for recurring donations. Include special perks for your donor club like access to a VIP lounge, exclusive events, season passes, and even early access.

You can keep your donor club simple with a single donation option. Or, you can offer a few tiers with different benefits and perks.

As you work with donors, treat them like your sponsors. Be sure to thank them for their support and keep them updated on what you're doing.

Organize Fundraising Events

Fundraising events can be a lot of work, but they can also be important ways to engage with your community and support the work your community theatre does.

Let your creativity lead as you create fundraising events. Consider the considerable talent of your performers and even ways you can partner with local businesses for mutual benefit.

• Galas – Offer dinner and entertainment to attendees. You can even consider a live auction or silent auction with items donated from local businesses.
• Dances & Balls – Give people a reason to dress up for a fun date night. You can make the dance themed around an upcoming production (like a Cinderella ball), or just make it a fun night of dancing at your theatre.
• Cabaret Nights or Talent Shows – Ask your actors and performers to bring a song, monologue, or scene, then sell tickets to it. You can host these evenings at regular intervals, and they do not have a high production cost.
• Casino or Game Nights – People love games and winning. This event can even appeal across ages. You could work with local businesses on prizes and even have some free tickets to your shows as prizes, too.
• Murder Mystery Nights – Lean into your performers’ skills as characters involved in a murder. Your attendees can act as detectives and work to solve the crime.
• Food Truck Night – Work with local food trucks to have them in your parking lot for one evening. Set up tables and chairs for people to enjoy outdoor dining. Charge an entry fee to cover costs – the margin goes to support your community theatre. You can also collect donations. Alternatively, you can work with the food trucks to negotiate some profit sharing.
• Auctions – Host prop or costume auctions, silent auctions, or incorporate auctions as part of your events.

As much as these events help fundraise and drive revenue to support your theatre, they are also great ways to expand your audience by introducing your theatre to more members of your community. It helps people become more engaged and more aware of all of the shows you produce throughout the year.

You can use Stride Events’s free mass email tool to market your event to all of your theatre-goers and donors. Once you have people signing up to come, you can encourage people to talk about your fundraising events the same way you do your shows – by incentivizing word-of-mouth.

Stride Events offers two tools to help you reach your attendees’ networks – Facebook Share & Save and a Referral Program. 

With the Facebook Share & Save incentive, you can offer a small $1-2 discount to everyone buying tickets when they share about your show or fundraising event with their Facebook friends. It’s cheaper than social media ads, and it’s more powerful. People like hanging out with their friends and going to events with them. 

With the Referral Program, you can set a rebate amount for every ticket your attendees get their friends and family to buy. The program is fully customizable and maxes at a free ticket order. So, you have full control and never have to pay an attendee more than their ticket order.

Add Fundraising Opportunities for Attendees

Beyond creating a donor community and expanding it through fundraising events, you can also offer fundraising opportunities as you interact with your attendees.

Request Donations During Ticket Sales

You can include a donation request for your theatre during your ticket sales process. With Stride Events’s community theatre ticketing software, you can easily include these requests in online sales and in-person box office sales.

Display QR Code Donation Posters

You can also display donation posters with QR codes. When people scan these codes, they can make a donation online.

With Stride Events, you can create a dedicated donation page complete with a customizable fundraising goal and a progress bar to show how much has been raised.

Identify Other Revenue Opportunities

You can also find other ways to grow your revenue from attendees without requesting a donation. These methods are another way to build a good revenue flow for your community theatre.

Add a Venue Fee to Ticket Sales

Another easy way to drive revenue for your theatre is to add a venue fee for each ticket. You can approach this by increasing the ticket cost by a small amount. Think $0.25-$1.00 – it’s a small difference for your attendees, but it can have a tremendous impact on your theatre’s bottomline.

The other approach is to add your own per-ticket custom fee. Stride Events makes this easy with our white label program. You can add your own per-ticket custom fee to online orders. Once again, a small fee can make a big difference for your revenue.

Create and Sell Merchandise

Another source for revenue and fundraising for your theatre is merchandise. Not only do the merchandise sales drive revenue for your theatre, wearable merchandise becomes a walking billboard for advertising your community theatre. It’s a double win for you.

Offer Experience Enhancements

Consider creating special tickets like VIP or backstage passes instead to help you drive revenue and offer more value to attendees opting into those experiences. Backstage passes offer a lot of value to attendees to make their experience more unique, and they are low cost to you.

Build a Donor Community

The work you do at your community theatre is all about community. You’re telling stories about the human experience. You’re bringing people together to perform, develop skills, grow confidence in ways that AI will never replicate.

Your donors recognize that value – it’s why they’re giving you money. Be sure they also feel the community connection, too.