San Antonio Symphony News and Archive

San Diego Orchestra offers a lesson for Alamo City




from the editorial section of the San Antonio Express News 9/25/98

by Lynnette M. Perkes



I understand the San Antonio Symphony, faced with a budget shortfall, has been given an ultimatum to cut practically every aspect of its operation, including staff.

Before the people of San Antonio accept this "solution," consider how it worked in San Diego, Calif.

San Diego has two major musical organizations - the symphony and the opera. In 1995, they had similar budgets and each had a marketing staff of 10, charged with getting people to buy tickets. The two groups differed drastically, however, in their development staffs.

"Development" means "fund-raising," a matter of life and death since ticket sales supply only half the income of the typical orchestra. The average American symphony got a return of about 3 to 1 on each dollar it spent on development. Salaries account for most of the development budget; hence each dollar you save by cutting development staff costs about $3 in lost contributions.

Our symphony had a development staff of five; our opera had 13. The opera devoted two positions each to donor relations; corporate gifts; individual gifts; and endowment. It had one person seeking grants and another whose job was to build the San Diego Opera's Corporate Council, a sort of club for senior officers of corporations that support the opera.

The symphony couldn't compete. Though 1995 ticket sales and ticket revenue were the highest in its history, contributions fell short. Staff cuts further crippled its fund-raising efforts. The symphony went into bankruptcy, emerging after an agonizing two years with a shrunken $6.5 million budget, reduced salaries, a shortened season and most of its principal players gone. Whether it can survive in this condition remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the opera company is fat, happy and solvent, with a budget of $10 million. With lavish funds for promotion, it plays to soldout houses and now makes 60 percent of its revenue from ticket sales. Everybody who's anybody has become an opera donor, including people who don't even like opera, and the opera's Corporate Council has grown by more than 50 percent in the past year. The opera's general manager is pitching a new $200 million opera house.

Cutting your symphony's development staff is like eating your seed corn. If your symphony isn't drawing enough donor support, it needs more troops out there, not fewer.

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Lynnette M. Perkes is secretary of VOSA, a nonprofit support group for the San Diego Symphony. Her son, Tal Perkes, is principal flutist for the San Antonio Symphony.


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