{"id":1348,"date":"2008-10-30T17:02:55","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T00:02:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/?p=1348"},"modified":"2013-02-07T19:08:03","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T03:08:03","slug":"symphony-finances-the-obama-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/10\/30\/symphony-finances-the-obama-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"symphony finances – the obama effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nPhoto credit: Cathy Cheney | Portland Business Journal<\/em><\/p>\n

Today at a lunch meeting with the musicians between our morning and afternoon rehearsals, OSO President Elaine Calder gave a short, no-nonsense talk on the state of the OSO’s finances in light of the stock market crash, bank credit crisis, and other such ominous events.<\/p>\n

The word?\u00c2\u00a0 In short, we’re doing o.k.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re well ahead on ticket sales compared to the same time last year, and those don’t look to be lagging at this point.\u00c2\u00a0 Individual giving remains the question mark.\u00c2\u00a0 As Elaine put it, “it’s not the few people that give $250,000 a year that you worry about – they’ll be just fine – it’s those who give $250 a year that we just don’t know about yet.”<\/p>\n

Most interesting to me was that the unique nature of Portland has possibly put us in a better situation than orchestras in other, larger cities.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, as Elaine put it, “New York and Detroit are the last places you want to be running a major arts organization right now – the financial services industry and the auto industry are in crisis mode, and [those orchestras] rely upon a lot of major corporate donors who are not doing well right now”.\u00c2\u00a0 Here in Portland, we have a few generous corporate sponsors, but most of our giving comes from the small donors: people giving between $50 and $250 a year, and buying subscriptions.\u00c2\u00a0 That insulates us from the major economic cycles that might cause a large corporation to pull the plug on series underwriting, for example.\u00c2\u00a0 So, like a political candidate that has outstanding grassroots support from many smaller donors (such as Barack Obama), we also benefit from our diversity of funding.\u00c2\u00a0 The lesson of this: your gift counts, no matter what its size!<\/p>\n

Also of note was the state of the endowment.\u00c2\u00a0 We have lost around $4 million (or 15% since the beginning of 2008 to the end of September) of valuation from the endowment, but the finance committee is going to take money out of income-only funds and put it into cash which will serve as collateral for our line of credit with US Bank.\u00c2\u00a0 That way, instead borrowing on the unrestricted fund in the endowment (which is limited to 70% of their daily cash value), we can borrow up to 100% against the amount that we have in the bank in cash, which will be immune to the effects of stock market fluctuations.\u00c2\u00a0 A wise move on the part of the finance committee.\u00c2\u00a0 The account structure will also take into account the $250,000 limit in FDIC coverage per account so we won’t be exposed to any loss if US Bank has some sort of unforeseen meltdown.<\/p>\n

All in all, it was an interesting meeting, and I think it’s fair to say that most of us left the meeting feeling a bit better about the financial health of the orchestra, and very confident in the hands of our leadership team of Elaine Calder and Walter Weyler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo credit: Cathy Cheney | Portland Business Journal Today at a lunch meeting with the musicians between our morning and afternoon rehearsals, OSO President Elaine Calder gave a short, no-nonsense talk on the state of the OSO’s finances in light of the stock market crash, bank credit crisis, and other such ominous events.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[103,1,2],"tags":[3668],"class_list":["post-1348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fundraising","category-news","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-oregon-symphony"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-lK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":497,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/10\/19\/perspective\/","url_meta":{"origin":1348,"position":0},"title":"perspective","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I wasn't able to attend the Oregon Symphony's annual membership meeting this afternoon due to teaching commitments, but I did read the summary by local arts journalist James Bash, and I have some thoughts of my own. First of all, it must be said that the financial situation of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7811,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2012\/08\/29\/is-the-oregon-symphony-the-future-model-for-the-symphony-orchestra\/","url_meta":{"origin":1348,"position":1},"title":"is the oregon symphony the future model for the symphony orchestra?","author":"Charles Noble","date":"August 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"You have to wonder. We have a deep pool of highly talented and skilled players. We \"punch above our weight\" as our outgoing President, Elaine Calder, likes to say. We're paid about 50% less than we should be. 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