posted
Many of you know that I am a circus artist, and that I toured two summers ago with Circus Smirkus, which is a professional youth circus based in VT. For those who didn't know, I did. Mike (who doesn't post much) also toured with Smirkus for a while.
HOWEVER Smirkus has run into some financial issues, and has had to temporarialy (we hope) shut down. According to the founder:
"We need to raise $250,000 by December 1st to be fully functioning with operations. We need twice that again within 8 months to finally wipe the long-term debt clean and start as a new organization sustainable for a long time to come, with restructured priorities and systems."
So I'm asking for your help. You can donate online at circussmirkus.org Even the smallest amount would make a difference, so please, this is a wonderful organization, and if you could spare even a few dollars, it would mean so much to all the kids at Smirkus.
Thank you. I'm sorry if this seems like advertising, or hitting you up for money (which I guess I am...) but Smirkus is really important to me, and I would really like to see it back on its feet.
Posts: 3420 | Registered: Jun 2002
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posted
Private donations alone are unlikely to sustain you. You've got a pretty decent audience-base, which should net you some good-sized corporate sponsors, particularly if you can come up with some creative "benefits" for their donations. You've got a number of different activities, which suggest a number of different revenue streams.
Could you post some of the broad financial details here, if you can find them? As a nfp, many of them are required to be publicly available. I'd like to know how much you took in over each of the last few years, broken down by broad category (private donations, public donations, revenue from X, revenue from Y, that sort of thing), and what your expenditures were over those same years, also broken down broadly.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Private donations alone are unlikely to sustain you.
This is true. What they are trying to do at this point is raise enough money to pay off the debt that has accumulated over several years. Once that is done, they want to run a more streamlined operation so they don't have to rely as much on private donations.
I'm not sure how many of those financial details are available. As it is, they are running on a small all-volunteer[1] staff, so I personally wouldn't want to ask anyone there to take the time to provide that information to me.
quote:Mike (who doesn't post much)
Only compared to some.
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[1] All-volunteer in the sense that they're not getting paid, not in the sense that the US military uses the term
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
I don't think the sums involved are likely to be raised in purely private donations in the short term, either. The $250k may be doable, but that'll require a very aggressive stance, particularly for an inactive organization; to make the $500k to erase debts, corporate donations will be necessary.
If you want corporate donors at any substantial level now, though, they're going to want to know things like I'm asking. Large corporate sponsors want to know their money is being spent effectively.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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