endowment takes another hit
Bloomberg News (your go-to source for bad news about New York City Opera) today laments that the company has “once again reached deep into its endowment.” According to scribe Zinta Lundborg, that endowment has suffered perhaps irreversible shinkage, dwindling from a massive, bulging $51 million in 2001 to a puny, humiliating $3 million currently. Lundborg suggests NYCO has been abusing its endowment by milking it repeatedly; meanwhile, hands-on assistance from deep-pocket donors has still not come. Quite a handful for George Steel, as he, in the words of Anne Midgette, “tries to get it up and running again.”
I am glad for your post longtimelistener, the only caveat I have is that ‘not for profit’ status allows for juggling of a lot of things, including defining things such as loans, subsidies, advances in ways that are convenient for the organization rather than strictly speaking true.
Secondly it is my understanding that Steel did not raise that money at Miller, but that his dance loving patron did, providing most of it herself. It was a one season thing; he has no track record of raising money or dealing with donors.
The cliche among development people for the last three months is that it is harder to raise $1,000 now than it was to raise $10,000 two years ago. Even if your figures are inflated somewhat and Steel has the wherewithal to plan and execute a bare bones season, and persuades the unions to work with him in reducing costs significantly (there is no indication that he or Yim have the ability to do either), raising still significant amounts very quickly in this environment is a frightening and not very encouraging prospect.
66 Henry way to go for fuck’s sake!!!! with your permission I’ll also use it (and frequently), I also strongly dislike Puccini, one of the great embarrasments of my life is that when I was young and dumb, I managed to collect 19 recordings of Tosca!!! most of them with Callas, and have not played one of them in the past 20 years! what a waste of money! and Butterfly, you call that great music???? Glad to find a kindred soul, and the first time in public I admit to my embarrasment.
I think La Cieca has intoned the next City Opera budget to be around $23million. That’s some shortfall!
#71 thanks for your support. I only go through these long posts so people will realize a great deal of NYCOs problems are just plain structural, lack of money. We are losing NYCO mainly to lack of money.