An End-of-Year Message from our Executive & Artistic Director
I don’t know about you, but for me, 2025 has been LONG. There were a lot of bright spots, and a lot of scary and dark ones, and I’m very grateful to have had a community to share them with. Over here at TSOC, we reached a lot of milestones– we had our first administrative retreat, we did our first work with live electronics, we worked with a fabulous consultant from Artistic Fundraising Group, and we received a record amount of grant funding. Of course, among those grant awards was the $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts, which, like so many others, was rescinded by the current administration. We feel very lucky that thanks to a combination of support from our community, flexibility from our artists, and our trademark scrappy can-do attitude, we were still able to finish out our production of “Groundwater” in fine fashion, and return to programming in the fall. We are also very grateful for the grants we’ve received for our current season, which both recognize the value of the work we’re doing, and are responding to the hardship caused by the NEA cancellations.
That being said, we are finding ourselves at a crossroads, and in the spirit of transparency, I feel compelled to share it with you. Sustainability is critical for any arts organization, and that’s especially true for small ones like ours, run by a volunteer staff who are all working other full-time jobs. While we are extremely lucky to receive grants that make up the largest single category of our annual budget, this past year has shown us that the future of that type of funding is very much in question. Grants once thought to be the most reliable are now turning into an ideologically-motivated lottery, other public funders are changing decades of policy to require a year off in between funding applications, and private foundations once open to new applicants are changing to “personal invite only,” with no information on how someone might obtain such an invitation. We are also very aware that small businesses are struggling under new economic policy, and individual donors who might once have had the capacity to give a few hundred dollars every year are being tightly squeezed by the cost of living.
We also know that Americans’ hunger for live performance is the highest it’s been since the pandemic. While opera has been the slowest genre to rebound, part of the gap is because most companies have decreased the number of performances they offer each season [source]. By contrast, TSOC has never had more consistent ticket sales. We are regularly coming within 3 seats or fully selling out at least one performance per run, offering 5-7 performances per show, and continuing to welcome new exceptional artists into the TSOC community.
As the end of the year approaches, we wanted to make a different request than we’ve made in the past. We don’t need a large end-of-year gift (unless you really want to give us one!)-- instead, we’d like to ask you to give us no more than you pay for a streaming service or Amazon Prime– $5-20 a month. For most people, this is an amount of money that you won’t miss each month, but for us, it will add up to hundreds of dollars over the year to help keep the lights on. When you visit our “donate” page, click the “Monthly” button at the top, and then choose any amount you feel comfortable donating each month.
I’m so grateful that you’ve stuck with us this year. Here’s hoping next year is better!