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Dayton Philharmonic needs your $$$
Note to the community: Your orchestra needs you.
Specifically, the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra needs to raise $1.2 million from you in the next three years — just to stay afloat. It needs the first $600,000 of that amount next year.
Welcome to the scary new world of arts funding.
You’ve been seeing lots of stories in the paper and on our website the last few months about how tough the times are for fine-arts groups: big budget cuts at the Dayton Ballet, layoffs and a cancelled exhibition at the Dayton Art Institute, and more. On Thursday, June 4, at its annual meeting, the Dayton Philharmonic drew the curtain to reveal its financial situation to past and present board members, donors, members, media and friends. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
DPO President Paul Helfrich, who took the helm just seven months ago, summed up the situation this way: “Last year, we tried to run a $5.2 million orchestra on $4.8 million in income. That’s clearly not sustainable. Next year, we’ll run a $4.8 million orchestra on a $4.8 million income. That’s a much better way to do it.”
The DPO has been living beyond its means for some time, but managed to balance the budget this year through cuts — eliminating five front-office jobs, cutting salary for Helfrich, Music Director Neal Gittleman and other staff, and freezing the musicians’ pay.
Even with all that, keeping the budget balanced next year will require raising that aforementioned $600,000, the amount they’ll be in the hole. The organization, meanwhile, will have to get even smaller and leaner; Helfrich said they’re looking hard at anything that isn’t “mission critical,” in terms of the orchestra’s music and education programs.
Helfrich explained that since 2002, the DPO has been able to balance its budget by dipping into an unrestricted $3 million rainy-day fund. Between market hits and the annual dip, that fund is now depleted. Spending from the restricted $4.4 million endowment isn’t an option in the world of non-profits.
Ironically, ticket sales are fairly stable, with the DPO’s Classical and Pops series attracting nearly 100 percent of the expected sales last season. Season subscriptions continue to trend down, but last-minute single-ticket sales are still strong.
And the people who bought those tickets got to see exceptionally, uniformly fine shows. There’s no denying that even while it’s in a financial kink, the orchestra is at an artistic high point.
“We had an extraordinary year,” Gittleman said. “One of the best the orchestra has ever had.” He’s right.
The program was inventive, mixing music from Motown, Hitchcock films and even video games with a rich banquet of traditional classics, including terrific performances of Beethoven’s Fifth and Mahler’s Ninth, which Gittleman reminded is one of the “most difficult pieces, technically and emotionally,” in the repertoire. Meanwhile, the DPO has kept up a healthy roster of educational programs that reached some 67,000 students last year with more than 300 performances at schools across the Miami Valley.
Next year promises more good stuff, and the maestro promises that musically, the DPO is “on a roll.” He hasn’t been wrong before.
“I am fully committed to do whatever it takes” to keep the DPO going, Gittleman promised, “in what could well be the most difficult year in the orchestra’s history.” So, there it is: After years of watching our top arts groups bite bullets and dodge them, even while larger towns have seen groups die, the truly ugly crunch days have arrived in Dayton. We need to start asking ourselves what our city would look like without something like the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, and do what we can to keep from having to find out.
Helfrich asked this of us all: “Come to the shows. Bring your friends. Talk us up — don’t be shy about talking about how great we are, and be enthusiastic when you talk us up. And contribute.”
Note to the community: Your orchestra needs you.
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