It’s hard enough just to raise money to produce theatre, how does WAM Theatre expect to do that and give money away with each event?

We are aware that our double philanthropic mission is highly unusual. We feel compelled to find a way to uplift both the work of women* and girls in the arts, and the lives of women and girls in the world. Our feeling is that when people gather to see theatre, there is, for that moment in time, a community that has been formed. We hope that this community will enjoy a great evening of theatre all the more knowing that some of the cost of the ticket will go to benefit women and girls both locally and worldwide.

Our ideal goal with each event would be to donate the amount of the funds raised to produce the event to the organization we have chosen to benefit. Our realistic goal is that the amount of money we can give after an event will vary depending on tickets sales, how many performances we do, the costs of producing the event, etc. Therefore, when we decide to whom we will donate proceeds, we will work with them to see about the various ways they can help to market our events and increase the percentage of tickets sold. The more tickets we sell, the more we can donate. We generally donate up around 20-25% of our box office proceeds to our beneficiaries.

Some years ago a group of enthusiastic runners put together the notion that they could run and raise money for important causes at the same time. Now we take it for granted that a runner may be running for the Cure. WAM Theatre wants to do the same with theatre.

* With thanks to and permission of Statera Arts we share their following language around the term ‘Women’: “Statera recognizes the limiting nature of the binary use of woman. We serve and welcome anyone on the gender spectrum who identifies either always or some of the time as a woman and those who identify as nonbinary.“