How Can We Make More Money

Convener(s): Richard Kingdom 

Participants: …we didn’t write it down…

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations: 

Looking at how we can get more money in. Think about the end product and how you might be able to get there (ie in reverse): I want to make an international-touring-multi-award-winning-financially-block-busting-show – how do I do that?

No get rich quick schemes here but some good advice:

Money saving strategies: visit “moneysavingexpert.com” or freecycling (online community getting rid of old things for free – good place to find equipment)

Sponsorship: ethical considerations (tobacco, arms and fast-food are blacklisted)

• All about building relationships
• Commission-based (eg offering 50p per ‘click through’ sale – this worked with an energy company who were encouraging people to switch to green energy and offered sponsors 50p for everyone who came to them via the sponsee’s website)
• Large sponsors covering a number of events eg Perrier and Becks – even once the sponsorship stops, the brand recognition continues (i.e. “Perrier winner Daniel Kitson”) and this can have a significant impact on PURCHASE DECISION and that’s what it’s all about.
• Model your audience – banks are interested in getting young people to sign up for instance
• Invite potential sponsors to events etc – groom them!
• Blanket sponsorship for festivals with a wide base of artists also carrying branding in their marketing
• “5 whys” – Why should I sponsor you? Answer.  Why should I support great theatre? Etc etc.  Get to the bottom of it!
• Also think about it from the opposite perspective – from the point of view of the sponsor.
• If we make relevant work then the money can’t be far away…

Friends schemes and Donations: regular donations, different amounts; can also relate it to things such as sponsoring studio space from 5mins to 5weeks

Creating Merchandise: Thinking of things to sell and canny ways of selling them.  Soundtracks, scripts etc etc.  Give your mailing list a free download of a song from the show and then offer to sell them the album.  If the album is then brought from a website which is the fictional shop of a character from the show then you can use the transaction to enhance the imagined life of your work (this idea comes from the Gorilla theatre session).

• Audience Development: “money is the symptom, audience is the goal”
• Centralisation of mailing lists etc but without abusing the inboxes of your followers – beware the media fatigue of a post-email society!
• Building mystique – making people feel like their privy to something (text messages about location for instance – rave style!)