Warren Buffett has his billionaire’s pledge, I have my arts as philanthropy pledge
Written by Artistic Director Kristen van Ginhoven as part of her ‘What’s my #vision’ series.
July 24, 2016
Last week, Kristen found out she was a finalist in the 1Berkshire Trendsetter Awards in the Entrepreneur/Visionary Category. This award is for a Berkshire business founder/owner whose company, organization or project has made a significant impact on their industry. The winner will be announced on September 15 at the “Celebrate the Berkshires’ event at Tanglewood. You can purchase tickets and see the other categories and finalists here. As part of being a finalist, Kristen had to answer a few questions for 1Berkshire- including: What are WAM’s plans for growth? For her July #vision series blog, Kristen shares her response.
WAM’s biggest plan for growth is for me, as WAM’s thought-leader and visionary, to fully embrace WAM Theatre as a place where Arts and Activism meet and to share that vision broadly and confidently in our own community and beyond.
As a Canadian who moved to the Berkshires in 2008 and didn’t know anyone, it has taken time to get to know our community, for the community to get to know me and for me to step confidently into my role as a visionary. While WAM’s supporters think highly of our work and our vision, WAM’s greatest opportunity is how many people don’t yet know we are here!
Therefore, it is incredibly exciting to be a finalist in the Entrepreneur/Visionary category as embracing and sharing WAM’s unique vision of theatre as philanthropy is a key aspect to WAM’s growth and something I’ve been working hard to do.
To that end, this year, I’ve been writing a #vision blog each month, laying out my vision for WAM’s growth into the future. You can read the first one here.
As another part of sharing our unique vision of theatre as philanthropy with our artistic and philanthropic colleagues outside the Berkshires, I am attending various conferences and summits and am developing my skills as a thought-leader. I have already been tapped to be a keynote speaker at a Women and Philanthropy Series in Florida in February 2017 and am working on more speaking engagements at both Artistic and Philanthropic events.
WAM’s long term vision is for our unique vision to influence the larger landscape of social entreneurship. Imagine if every arts leader embraced our model and donated a portion of their box office proceeds to the cause their leader cared about? Imagine the social change that would create!
If WAM can do it successfully and be sustainable, then any other arts organization can also do it. When I see the impact of our work- the jobs we’ve created, the opportunities we’ve created through our philanthropic donations to our beneficiaries, the impact we’ve made on our education participants- I’m inspired to share our vision with other organizations, in the hopes that they will embrace it as well.
Warren Buffett has his billionaire’s pledge, I have my arts as philanthropy pledge!
So- that’s the large vision.
Here are some of our organizational plans for growth towards that larger vision.
As with any start-up company, WAM Theatre is facing a critical time in its development, where it must fulfill the early promise of its talent and demonstrated potential in order to grow into an impactful and self-sustaining organization. I co-founded WAM Theatre with a firm commitment to working with integrity and the highest level of professionalism. Therefore, I understand that in order to continue to grow WAM must maintain smart and steady growth in order to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for our programs.
To that end, in 2015, the WAM Board of Directors and I committed to an aggressive strategic plan calling for increasing the organization’s infrastructure to allow for increased growth and ongoing sustainability. Of course, this charge comes with significant financial implications, and WAM is successfully working to secure funding to ensure that the organization will be able to attract and retain increased professional administrative staff.
As a core part of our strategic plan for the future, in 2016, the organization began to grow from a founder-driven company with a primarily volunteer-based staff to a formalized office structure including the addition of a General Manager, an Education Coordinator and a Philanthropy and Outreach Coordinator. These part-time staff members, alongside me, will be responsible for increasing both WAM’s contributed and earned income through educational programming, continued community collaborations, focused fundraising and marketing initiatives as well as running the company’s day-to-day operations to maximize WAM’s productivity, long-term stability, and to promote our overall organizational health.
As of July 2016, we have nine part-time staff, with another person starting September 1. Our goal is to move the majority of those people to more hours in 2017 and beyond, eventually having some full-time staff by 2020. As a non-profit that started with a $10,000 budget in 2010, we are proud to be contributing more and more to the creative economy in the Berkshires.
In addition, WAM will continue to grow our Board of Directors, adding key community members to its leadership including those with expertise in the areas of accounting, financial management, and small business development. We currently have 6 board members and are working towards 10 by 2020.
WAM is working hard to increase our portfolio of institutional funders, particularly those providing general operating support, which is already beginning to come to fruition, with two successful large sized grants towards this in 2016 so far. We are working closely with Raising Change, an organization that is helping everyone involved with WAM maximize our fundraising and branding potential, both inside and outside of the Berkshires. Gaining support and recognition for our unique vision outside of the Berkshires will help us achieve sustainability, which will result in providing more jobs and opportunities in the Berkshires.
The result of these efforts will be that I will be able to focus all of my energies on sharing WAM’s unique vision of theatre as philanthropy, creating high quality theatrical productions as well as developing powerful education programs and collaborative outreach projects, all of which will continue to serve the needs of our community.
Those are our big picture plans and goals towards the future.
The impulse behind it all, as I share in that first #vision blog, is rooted in doing all that necessary work so that I have the ability to do the things I am most passionate about:
Give someone a job in the theatre.
Give a woman the chance to hear her story told.
Give a woman or girl somewhere in the world an opportunity to grow because I staged a play.
You can read our strategic plan here.
You can read my latest #vision blog, about a five year old prediction coming true, here.
All of us at WAM congratulate Kristen on being a finalist in the 1Berkshire Trendsetter Awards and wish her luck on September 15!