It’s the most fundraising time of the year
Last year, we hit you with End Of Year Ask (10 Minute Version) (FFT’s Version). What a gift for us all that a T. Swift joke is relevant again this holiday season, and we promise, it’s significantly easier to give FFT your money than Ticketmaster.
In that ask, we let you know we’d spend your donations on increasing artist stipends across the board (check), adding a full week of rentals into our tech weeks to eliminate 10 out of 12s (check), securing multi-cam archival footage (check), and upping design budgets (check). We also wanted to account for unpredictable return-to-theater ticket sales without dipping into our cash reserve and to return to a three-mainstage season in ‘22-’23 as long as we could do so without compromising budgets.
Those two are decidedly unchecked and we want to be transparent with you as to why:
Individual giving has not recovered to even a fraction of what it was pre-pandemic and we have all learned that we, in fact, need to be raising even more than we were before just to sustain with longer techs, higher artist pay, and how much inflation is impacting the price of scenic lumber. You might be thinking it’s the big checks we’re missing — we’re extremely grateful to say that’s not the case. We’re missing the regular $5, $10, $25, or $50 donations that add up. Our community investing in FFT in small but regular ways is the foundation FFT began on. If you think you’re not a donor, you can be at FFT. Any gift at any size makes you a contributor to our annual fund. There’s an option below to give us $20.23 — give us the cost of one Lyft this holiday season and you get the gift of calling yourself a donor. Philanthropy looks very cute on you.
We transitioned our staff from contractors to employees this past summer and everyone on FFT’s staff now gets paid an hourly wage rather than stipends to more equitably account for periods of higher labor (i.e. tech). We made the decision that better compensating all of the people who make FFT’s work possible had to be a priority before bringing back more shows. Trust us, we want to do both. But we can’t do both without you.
This year, the ask is much simpler: if you value FFT’s art, artists, and employees, and you want FFT to stick around, make a donation today.
$2023 if you’re able, $202.30 if that’s more your speed, $20.23 if you think this ask isn’t for you too (it is.)
Frequently Asked Questions…
Must I give in an increment of 2023? Absolutely not! We just love a theme (but we also love $10 and $10,000 donations.)
Can I donate as a gift? Yes! Select the “dedicate my donation” checkbox on the donation form and options will pop up for delivering the notification to your recipient.
I’m trying to make this whole giving to FFT thing a habit, can you make it very easy for me to give you a credit card that runs monthly and I forget about it? Take a look at a membership. It’s exactly what you described but with perks like free tickets, opening upgrades, and gala discounts.
Will I get a tax receipt? Yes! They’ll automatically be emailed and you’ll also get a full year receipt in January.
Do you still end all of your end of year asks with gifs? Oh, you miss those? We thought maybe we were getting too old for them, but if you insist, anything for you, sweet donor.
