We reached our goal!1/16/2024 Thank You, Thank You, Thank You Thanks to your incredible support, our 2024 Fundraiser was a success! We raised $11,822.83 over the past month which will help us reach our goals for 2024, including:
We are so grateful to everyone who supported this year's campaign. Whether you donated money, offered a fundraiser perk, or just shared the campaign with your friends and family, we couldn't do this without you. Below are just some of the amazing folks who helped get us over the finish line: Beverly Abegg Eve & William Appleton Meghana Baliga Andrew Balmer Jake Beckhard Steven Bedard Sharlene Bedard Donna Blackmond Kelly Butler Rachel Casparian Amelia Castillo Alexandra Castro Kylie Christensen Trudi Cohen & John Bell Boxcutter Collective Emily Conley Farrah Crane Katie Dagon Jasmine Dobbs-Marsh Mary Downing Ann Farrell Martha Ferguson Mariah Freda Richard Fudge Summer Gan Kate Gazzaniga Mark Gordon John Graham Sarah Habib Chris Harcum Elizabeth Hess Cody Hom Benjamin Inbar Colleen Jenkins Martins Jukna-Parsons Samantha Keogh Joshua Krugman Marilyn Lawson Marcia Lazer Marcia Lazer Julia Levine Diana Levy Brooke Lieberwitz Efrem Mallach John P. McEneny Victor Milione Melissa Moschitto Melissa Mowry Brenda Otis Dave Palmer Alice Pencavel Maxine Phillips Lynn Radov Austin Regan Debra Register Rebecca Rice Mandy Robbins Jess and Bryan Rosenberg Raphael Royer Dominique Salerno Anne Shulock Julia & Mike Snider Nickerson Jaclynn Swope Bessie Taliaferro Noelle Teagno Alison Walter Pandora & John Wohler Lynette Wood Gennady Yusim Thank you for donations made in honor of Nicky Valdivia and Jeff Stone. And thank you to the 19 supporters who donated anonymously. Didn't get the chance to donate?
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Seeking a Bookkeeper!1/11/2024 Bookkeeping Job Description
Contractor Role January–December, 2024 Theater in Asylum is looking for a skilled part-time Bookkeeper to maintain our financial records, including purchases, sales, receipts, and payments. This position is a one-year contract position, and we anticipate the person working five to ten hours a month. Bookkeeper job duties include working closely with our Managing Director to process accounts payable and receivable and manage invoices and payments. Our ideal candidate has bookkeeping experience for a non-profit and is familiar with QuickBooks accounting software. Ultimately, the Bookkeeper’s responsibilities are to accurately record all day-to-day financial transactions of our company. Responsibilities:
Requirements and skills:
Compensation: We are a very small fiscally sponsored theater company with an operating budget in 2024 of around $18,000. Everyone working as part of the administrative contracted staff (including the role of the Bookkeeper) is paid $1,200 for the year. See our budget transparency commitments here. To apply: Please email TIA Managing Director Kathryn Appleton. Announcing Our 2024 Book Club1/4/2024 Happy New Year! As 2024 begins, we invite you to join us in a book club as we develop our next production. We are interested in exploring how hope functions, and how it’s sustained by people who don’t know if they’ll ever see victory. In dark times, it seems as though reality tells us to flee, to ignore the problem, or to focus on only small-scaled solutions. Yet we see throughout history that our greatest victories were won after many tireless individuals and movements sustained their hope and kept working despite the dark circumstances. How did they do it? How did they have the stamina to carry on when self-interest, opposing movements, and conspiracy theories / misinformation provided easy outs? Theater in Asylum is embarking on something of a character study, of a character who has repeated throughout history. Who is this person who hopes in the darkness, who works in the darkness, and who keeps at it when all seems lost? We know that person is alive and working today. How do we help them, and in doing so, help ourselves and everyone? Join us for a book club to explore these ideas, starting with… Hope in the Dark
By Rebecca Solnit Book club discussion Wednesday, January 31 7pm ET on Zoom 2023 Transparency Report12/29/2023
Theater in Asylum believes transparency enables the sharing of power and responsibility. We commit to being open with how company decisions are made and money is spent. Below please find an overview of our finances in 2023. This is also on our website’s transparency page, a page we launched in 2021 as a way to showcase our finances and decision-making.
Note: This is a financial summary of our work in 2023. For a non-financial review, please see our 2023 Year in Review. Big Picture Takeaways
2023 Major Projects
How We Paid People in 2023
Annually Contracted Staff
*Midyear budget revision: Artistic and Managing Directors were originally budgeted to receive $1,200 for all work during the year (does not receive project stipends). After the mid-year budget revision (March 2023), this was taken down to $120 for all work during the year (does not receive project stipends). Once all the dust had settled on 2023 expenses, the decision was made to reinstate the full $1,200 stipend for the Artistic and Managing Directors. **The Nobodies... Collaborators were originally budged to receive $900 stipends for this project. After mid-year budget revision (March 2023), this was taken down to $800. Grants
We had a particularly tough year with grants in 2023. With our fiscal sponsorship, we were limited in what grants we could apply to.
This past year we applied to:
Learnings and observations for future grant applications:
Fundraising
Fundraising is always a challenge for us as it is so time consuming.
*Fiscal sponsorship and credit card processing fees not deducted. Ticketing
367 people saw The Nobodies Who Were Everybody, with tickets on a sliding scale from $0-$40.
*Keeping a free ticket option available at every event is a priority to us. We do not want cost to be a barrier to seeing our work. Free tickets are obtainable to anyone who says they need one, no questions asked. Revenue Take-Away:
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TIA - 2023 Budget Summary | ||||
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Expenses | Initial Budget | Midyear Budget Revision | Actual (books closed 12/29/23) |
Notes |
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Administrative | $2,690 | $3,126 | $2,767.06 | Savings from Google, Weebly, and tax filing. |
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Development | $600 | $30 | $0.00 | Theater in Asylum, in collaboration with 4 other indie theater companies, are working with an anti-oppression consultant which is funded through ART/NY. |
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Personel | $22,484 | $19,659 | $19,797.49 | Stipends were cut down in mid-year budget meeting. |
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Space | $12,660 | $5,950 | $5,120.00 | We continued to save with extraordinary partnerships that yielded in-kind space donations, thus saving rental costs. |
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Production Costs | $11,700 | $7,920 | $6,229.28 | We cut down costs in the mid-year budget meeting and saved in actual costs once the production was built. |
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Contingencies | $2,278 | $1,653 | $552.85 | |
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Total Cost | $52,412 | $38,339 | $34,466.68 | |
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Revenues | Initial Budget | Midyear Budget Revision | Actual (books closed 12/29/23) |
Notes |
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Donations | $16,800 | $19,384 | $21,509.24 | We held an emergency mid-year fundraiser, which exceeded expectations. While we prefer the cadence of only fundraising at the end of the year, we recognize the success of the midyear fundraiser this year. |
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Grants | $10,000 | $2,250 | $2,250.00 | We had a very rough year in grants. We became ineligible for grants we had consistently won in the past, and also did not win other grants we had received in the past. This prompted the mid-year budget revision. |
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Ticketing | $30,910 | $10,650 | $9,099.95 | At the mid-year budget meeting we decided we had significantly overestimated our ticket revenues. We cut this way down, but still underperformed. This is good information for future budgeting. |
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Other | $10,000 | $5,000 | $0.00 | We had a nest egg from previous years that we anticipated needing to use. |
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Total Revenues | $67,710 | $37,284 | $32,859.19 | We brought in less than we budgeted at our midyear meeting, and significantly less than our initial budget. |
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Net | Initial Budget | Midyear Budget Revision | Actual (books closed 12/29/23) |
Notes |
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Expenses | $52,412 | $38,339 | $34,466.68 | |
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Revenues | $67,710 | $37,284 | $32,859.19 | |
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Net | $15,298 | -$1,054 | -$1,607.49 | We used $1,607 from our nest egg. This is significantly less than the $10k we initially planned on using. |
Looking Ahead to 2024
- At long last, it is time for Theater in Asylum to graduate from being fiscally sponsored to our own 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
- Why do this? As you may have heard us grumble about, 2023 brought new rules to New York State arts funding (NYSCA), barring us from eligibility for a grant we had consistently won in years past. In addition, most grants (including DCLA grants) are only available to 501(c)3 nonprofits. As our company continues to grow, this fiscal transformation will restore and also open valuable funding streams for our work.
- So what’s the big deal? Why do you need money to do this? We are a small team working on TIA part-time, and becoming a 501(c)3 is a considerable investment of time, resources, and money. In addition to needing a lawyer to file this transition for us, we’ll need to upgrade our bookkeeping to the rigorous levels required of nonprofits. In 2023, we began a transition to Quickbooks and paid people high enough to require 1099 filing for the first time. We hope to continue this in 2024 and add a bookkeeper to our team.
Grants for FY2024 we have applied for so far:
- ART/NY’s Small Theaters Grant ($5k–$10k across 2 years): Should hear in February 2024.
- BAC’s Brooklyn Arts Fund (up to $5k): Should hear in February 2024.
- Actors Equity Foundation: TBA grant value and when we will hear back.
Ticketing
- We are planning to offer tickets to the How to Survive the End of the World Cabaret on a sliding scale from $0-$35.
- $0 tickets will continue to be available to anyone who needs one, no questions asked.
2024 Payment Structure
- Annual Staff: We are planning to keep our contracted, annual staff stipends at $1,200 for all work during the year (annual staff does not receive project stipends). The annual staff annual staff will consist of 2 Artistic Directors, 1 Managing Director, 1 PR & Marketing Manager, 1 Cold Readings Coordinator, and one TBD financial role. We are considering the hire of a bookkeeper and phasing out the Grants and Fundraising Coordinator. Movement on this decision is paused until the 2024 fundraiser is complete.
- Cabaret Collaborators: Collaborators on the How to Survive the End of the World are budgeted to receive $100 stipends. Any grant money we win will primarily go towards this Cabaret and the collaborator stipends will most likely increase.
- Cold Readings: We plan to raise the facilitator fee to $75 per Cold Reading facilitation. Readers and listeners will continue to be welcomed on a volunteer basis.
Thank you!
With gratitude,
Paul, Katie, and Kathryn
Theater in Asylum
Ps. We are currently fundraising for 2024! Please consider supporting us with a donation here.
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Theater in Asylum (TIA) is a New York-based theater company founded in 2010 to challenge and empower our community. TIA joyfully pursues a rigorous research and an ensemble-driven approach to theater-making. We create performances to investigate our past, interpret our present, and imagine our future. We prize space to process, space to question—asylum—for ourselves and our community.
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