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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

Heiskell:

Board members. We said, “Twenty-five thousand, a piece.” For all those other than people like Anna Crouse who is in the theatre but not in money. And I don't think that very many people on the board took their responsibilities as seriously as they should. And I don't think they--they just didn't have the kind of contacts and, you know, they hadn't had their backs scratched so that they could go scratch somebody else's back. Reasonably, considering all of that it's amazing that we raised as much money as we did. We had some friends who went out and helped us. Fred Heckinger, of the Times, Alberta Arthurs of the Rockefeller Foundation got together a lot of people. And I think we actually raised in the three years, something like seven million dollars, which isn't too bad for that kind of an outfit. But it's not enough. All non-profit theatres, this I learned from a study we made and from talking with people, get roughly between forty-five and fifty-five percent of their money from tickets. They've got to raise the rest. So if you got a twelve million dollar budget, you've got to raise six million every year. We were not equipped to raise six million every year.

Q:

That goes to your point of saying, “It should have started with a five million dollar endowment?”

Heiskell:

Yeah. So that money did not become the uppermost worry which it is right now. And you didn't have anybody there on the board who was willing to really pony up in a big way.

I'm not quite sure how, but at some point a fellow by the name of Vic Palmieri came in there as president. I think he came in





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