The Finances and Operations of Performing Arts Organizations in 2001 and 2002

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Abstract

This report summarizes key facts and trends affecting the performing arts sector from 2001 and 2002.  The data collected permits managers and observers of nonprofit professional producing companies, and presenters to take a common perspective on how they are financed and operated, to compare organizations of different disciplines and different size, and to explore changes from year to year.

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Introduction

The performing arts have a central place in American life. Approximately one-third of adults attend live performances in the arts each year and, in 2001, consumers spent more on performing arts events than on either movie tickets or sporting events. Professional nonprofit companies and arts presenters account for much of this activity.

The financial and operational management of these organizations is largely invisible to their audiences and donors. Nonetheless, they are vitally important to sustaining the vitality of the field, and they are the focus of this summary report.

This report is the product of a unique collaboration among five major performing arts service organizations to combine data they collect from their members into a cohesive portrait of the nonprofit professional performing arts field. In 2000, the American Symphony Orchestra League, Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA, OPERA America, and Theatre Communications Group joined forces as the Performing Arts Research Coalition (PARC), to improve the collective capacity of the performing arts field to gather and use information. The first major product of the collaboration was The Value of the Performing Arts in Five Communities, an analysis of household survey data collected in 2002. PARC also sought to develop a common set of financial, operational, and administrative questions for the national service organizations to ask their member organizations in their annual membership surveys. Using these data for fiscal years 2001 and 2002, PARC assembled a data set that includes the country's leading performing arts organizations, as well as hundreds of smaller professional community-level organizations.

The data collected by this project permit managers and observers of nonprofit professional producing companies and presenters to take a common perspective on how they are financed and operated, to compare organizations of different disciplines and different size, and to explore changes from year to year. Compared to data from other sources, the financial and operational data are far more detailed and, unlike information from the IRS or the Economic Census, include financial and operational information on organizations hosted by universities as well as freestanding organizations.

In the first two years of the project, we gathered data from 1,469 surveys. This included 797 organizations for fiscal 2001 and 672 for fiscal 2002, with 477 responding in both years. All are professional nonprofit performing arts companies and presenters, including most of the leading institutions in symphony, opera, dance, and theatre fields.

The complete report is available in PDF format.