Board Structuring for Community Theater

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com, my name is Stan and I'm here to tell you about theater resources for community theater. With the structure of your community theater board, you need to think about getting things done that you need to get done. Board members should all be productive. They should all be adding something to the organization. Sometimes you'll point board members because they're very well connected in the community; they have access to all sorts of resources that will help the theater. Sometimes you put them on the board because they know a lot about theater and they've been very involved in theater. That's how I got on the board here. Sometimes you put them on the board because they're very good at managing and they've got special skills or disciplines that the board really needs. Accounting perhaps, law, or something like that. You want a variety of people on your board all when we're adding something. Then you want to have committee structure because there's a lot of work to do in a community theater. You want to have a committee for example looking at the plays that are going to be selected for the next season. Reviewing lots of scripts and making recommendations to the board about what plays to have. You want to have a committee involved with nothing but fund raising, because you need to keep that coordinated. In our case for example now, we're going to be raising money to renovate this theater building that's been given to us, but at the same time we're going to be raising money for the underwriting of our productions. We don't want to have different people approaching the same business or the same individual for money 2 or 3 times during the year for different purposes. That all has to be coordinated so that people don't get tired of being approached. You'll need to have committees for things like developing a strategic plan. Once your theater is running, it's very important that each stage of the game, at each major milestone that you've set for yourself is an accomplishment like getting a building or getting a place to perform that's reliable. You want to work in a strategic plan. This is our strategic plan. You get it all on one page if you can. It means you have to boil it down, make it very concise, but basically this is the guidance document that tells you what are we trying to accomplish in the next year. What are our major long-term objectives, that's this column. What are near term goals, what are strategies for achieving these goals. We're going to appoint this committee, we're going to apply for membership in this organization and so on. Then the last column, very important, the measures; how are we going to measure our progress. For example, show attendance of 1,000 people by the fall of 2007 is one of our measures. Season tickets sales of 250. Certain key people in place, cash flow, being on budget, all that sort of thing. We have goals for the audience development, for building our audience, for the staff, for financial goals, our facilities, expanding our programs, and training and professionalism. These are the major areas we want to emphasize. At the top of the whole thing is a mission station that tells your organization and others what your organization is really trying to accomplish in the community."