2. True Excellence Requires True Financial Strength. Economic downturns in 2001 and 2008 gave many of us pause, and caused great upheaval across the arts and commerce. In reacting to these challenges, the Cleveland Orchestra chose to re-evaluate its business model and to clarify its institutional priorities to succeed best in the 21st century. We began with a holistic commitment to identifying our financial challenges and mapping out a disciplined path to financial security. Short-term solutions and funding stopgaps might result in balanced budgets for the moment, but only with a long-term financial plan can we gain the strength necessary to sustain our artistic excellence over the long haul, while also providing room for innovation and growth. Although we have achieved a balanced budget in recent years, we are ever mindamericanorchestras.org
Roger Mastroianni
certgoers without sacrificing the quality of the product we offer. Going beyond the concert hall, in 2013 we launched “The Cleveland Orchestra at Home,” an annual neighborhood residency program in collaboration with local business and community leaders designed expressly to bring musical performances to porches and bars, schools and churches, bowling alleys and coffee shops, and all around town. This program builds upon our longstanding free community concerts—for the Fourth of July and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day—and creates a new layer of relationships with people throughout our community. Among the Cleveland Orchestra’s most visible successes in the past few years is the dynamic expansion of audiences under age 30. Since the launch of a variety of audience development programs in 2011, more than 130,000 young people have attended Cleveland Orchestra concerts. From this, we are well on our way to our goal of building the youngest audience of any orchestra. And, not coincidentally, by simultaneously developing lasting ties with other music capitals—including Miami, Vienna, and New York—we have built a larger, committed worldwide audience.
Music Director Franz Welser-Möst leads the Cleveland Orchestra in a performance at John Adams High School, September 2010.
ful that financial strength is something planned for and built, and there is more work to be done. In recent years, the orchestra’s endowment has reached approximately $175 million, with the annual draw from that
We have adopted a mindset of transparency, sharing our plans and our progress, our challenges and successes, openly across all constituencies.
covering 15 percent of annual operating costs. But, as other orchestras have also realized, this is not enough. In Cleveland, we believe that the endowment must expand, through cash gifts and deferred commitments, to soon provide in excess of 20 percent and, ultimately, 30 percent of the orchestra’s annual operating budget, based on a limited and prudent 5 percent endowment draw. Our fundraising strategy includes establishing 1,000 new legacy commitments by 2018, to secure a pipeline of support that ensures a continual expansion of the endowment well into the future; and a robust annual fund that grows year over year, to address the day-to-day needs of the organization. At the same time, donors are demanding that any special fundraising focuses on new ways to add more value—through efforts such as community programming, education, opera, and
ballet—instead of being called upon to eliminate recurring annual operating deficits. This approach has particular appeal to corporate and foundation donors, who are focused on funding specific projects rather than giving general support. We believe that pairing a growing annual fund with an enhanced endowment, along with clear project-centered opportunities and healthy ticket sales, provides the basis for a sustainable funding strategy. We are committed to making this our reality by the orchestra’s centennial in 2018, when we will complete a ten-year, comprehensive fundraising campaign. 3. We’re All in This Together. Achieving long-term financial strength requires us not only to say but to firmly believe that we are all working toward a set of shared goals. The orchestra’s artistic achievements, audience growth, engagement with community, and a solid plan for financial strength are possible only because musicians, staff, board members, and volunteers have banded together in service of the institutional goals that will build a bright future. To do so, we have adopted a mindset of transparency, sharing our plans and our progress, our challenges and successes, openly across all constituencies. In recent years, the Cleveland Orchestra’s musicians have taken on the goals of the institution as their own, actively partnering with staff and trustees to ac-
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