Festival Theatre Ensemble Grant
Festival Theatre Ensemble
PO Box 954
Los Gatos, CA 95031
www.festivaltheatreensemble.org
www.lgshakes.org
Mission
The mission of Festival Theatre Ensemble (FTE) is defined as follows, in its official 501(c)(3) documents.
Festival Theatre Ensemble is dedicated to the production of classical theatre and the creation of original stage adaptations of classic novels, legends, and fairy tales, with the purpose of making live classical theatre more accessible and enjoyable to today's audiences.
Overview
Festival Theatre Ensemble (FTE) was recently described as “one of the best outdoor summer repertory theatre groups in the Bay Area.” Now in its ninth season, FTE performs three plays in repertory each summer, entertaining 3000 patrons at two venues. FTE’s two venues/festivals are the Mid-Pen Shakespeare Festival in Menlo Park (four weekends in June), and the Los Gatos Shakespeare Festival in Los Gatos (four weekends beginning mid-July). In between the two venues, FTE’s substantial outdoor stage is dismantled, moved, and reassembled. At the end of the summer the stage is dismantled and returned to storage.
Focus of grant need
Despite producing theatre of consistently high quality, FTE struggles to fund its $90,000 to $100,000 annual budget, and numerous fixed costs within the budget make economizing difficult. One of the fixed expenses, $6,500 or more each season, is rental for risers used at the Los Gatos venue, which create tiered (stadium-style) seating. The risers are vital to giving every seat in our theatre “house” of 200-220 a great view. Because few companies compete in the market for riser rentals, even maintaining the cost at the current level is challenging.
The ensemble has long wished to own a set of risers, but the cost to purchase is prohibitive: three times the per-season rental cost ($20,000). Recent economic times have created an opportunity, however. As budgets tighten everywhere, some with long-term riser rentals (schools, for example) are discontinuing rentals and returning them. This is creating overstock of used risers at the company we rent from, and they are offering used risers for purchase at prices far less than new. If FTE can seize the opportunity to purchase the risers, at a significantly reduced cost, they can banish the 7% riser expense from the budget for every year to come.Finding the area of grant need was interesting. FTE’s treasurer writes most of the organization’s grants. She is busy enough that integrating my effort with her numerous efforts would be a time sink. However, there are other grants that the producer would like to have written, which are new (this is one of them). For her, having me as a newcomer who must do all of the work (rather than be managed), and learn-by-writing a grant that otherwise might not happen is a plus. She was gone the week of our assignment, emailing her input to Monday’s board meeting, and returning late the night the assignment was due. Though I didn’t have the assignment at that time, once she heard what I needed to do she had an idea that was literally waiting for time and resources. Finding the right person is key. Had I not known the organization well, and from the inside, all would have been different (and probably less helpful to everyone).
Potential grantors
I am focusing on possible corporate grantors, because the sum required is relatively large. Getting part of the sum required but not all will not help, since the project cannot be carried out “in part”. The Grantsmanship Center lists the following Corporations, and their City of Headquarters. This is a subset of the corporations listed, including the towns where FTE has the broadest base of support (determined by number of names on the FTE mailing list):
To decide where to apply, each and every one of these companies needs some research. Basing the selection on the areas we serve (especially Menlo Park, where the shows are offered “Free Admission, Donations Cheerfully Accepted”) has advantages. We must have old connections to SRI (they certainly know who we are), because our set used to be stored there in the off season.
For the most part I would steer clear of companies that are best known (Google, eBay, Apple), because they are all likely inundated with requests: they are obvious. Both Google and eBay have potentially interesting connections to our theatre troupe, because of what we do. Google provides a method to learn about any topic in the world. With out theatre, we take learning about things to a whole new level of detail. eBay’s conglomeration of old and new fits with the theatre world, where virtually nothing ever really goes away... the plays themselves are old, but each production is fresh. A prop or costume located for a particular year generally hangs around for many years, and is used many times in different ways... so what’s old really is new.
I have focused here more on identifying a range of companies that merit further investigation than further exploration or two or three. By surveying many we have a better chance of locating the few that are the best fit, as opposed to simply the most obvious.
PO Box 954
Los Gatos, CA 95031
www.festivaltheatreensemble.org
www.lgshakes.org
Mission
The mission of Festival Theatre Ensemble (FTE) is defined as follows, in its official 501(c)(3) documents.
Festival Theatre Ensemble is dedicated to the production of classical theatre and the creation of original stage adaptations of classic novels, legends, and fairy tales, with the purpose of making live classical theatre more accessible and enjoyable to today's audiences.
Overview
Festival Theatre Ensemble (FTE) was recently described as “one of the best outdoor summer repertory theatre groups in the Bay Area.” Now in its ninth season, FTE performs three plays in repertory each summer, entertaining 3000 patrons at two venues. FTE’s two venues/festivals are the Mid-Pen Shakespeare Festival in Menlo Park (four weekends in June), and the Los Gatos Shakespeare Festival in Los Gatos (four weekends beginning mid-July). In between the two venues, FTE’s substantial outdoor stage is dismantled, moved, and reassembled. At the end of the summer the stage is dismantled and returned to storage.
Focus of grant need
Despite producing theatre of consistently high quality, FTE struggles to fund its $90,000 to $100,000 annual budget, and numerous fixed costs within the budget make economizing difficult. One of the fixed expenses, $6,500 or more each season, is rental for risers used at the Los Gatos venue, which create tiered (stadium-style) seating. The risers are vital to giving every seat in our theatre “house” of 200-220 a great view. Because few companies compete in the market for riser rentals, even maintaining the cost at the current level is challenging.
The ensemble has long wished to own a set of risers, but the cost to purchase is prohibitive: three times the per-season rental cost ($20,000). Recent economic times have created an opportunity, however. As budgets tighten everywhere, some with long-term riser rentals (schools, for example) are discontinuing rentals and returning them. This is creating overstock of used risers at the company we rent from, and they are offering used risers for purchase at prices far less than new. If FTE can seize the opportunity to purchase the risers, at a significantly reduced cost, they can banish the 7% riser expense from the budget for every year to come.Finding the area of grant need was interesting. FTE’s treasurer writes most of the organization’s grants. She is busy enough that integrating my effort with her numerous efforts would be a time sink. However, there are other grants that the producer would like to have written, which are new (this is one of them). For her, having me as a newcomer who must do all of the work (rather than be managed), and learn-by-writing a grant that otherwise might not happen is a plus. She was gone the week of our assignment, emailing her input to Monday’s board meeting, and returning late the night the assignment was due. Though I didn’t have the assignment at that time, once she heard what I needed to do she had an idea that was literally waiting for time and resources. Finding the right person is key. Had I not known the organization well, and from the inside, all would have been different (and probably less helpful to everyone).
Potential grantors
I am focusing on possible corporate grantors, because the sum required is relatively large. Getting part of the sum required but not all will not help, since the project cannot be carried out “in part”. The Grantsmanship Center lists the following Corporations, and their City of Headquarters. This is a subset of the corporations listed, including the towns where FTE has the broadest base of support (determined by number of names on the FTE mailing list):
To decide where to apply, each and every one of these companies needs some research. Basing the selection on the areas we serve (especially Menlo Park, where the shows are offered “Free Admission, Donations Cheerfully Accepted”) has advantages. We must have old connections to SRI (they certainly know who we are), because our set used to be stored there in the off season.
For the most part I would steer clear of companies that are best known (Google, eBay, Apple), because they are all likely inundated with requests: they are obvious. Both Google and eBay have potentially interesting connections to our theatre troupe, because of what we do. Google provides a method to learn about any topic in the world. With out theatre, we take learning about things to a whole new level of detail. eBay’s conglomeration of old and new fits with the theatre world, where virtually nothing ever really goes away... the plays themselves are old, but each production is fresh. A prop or costume located for a particular year generally hangs around for many years, and is used many times in different ways... so what’s old really is new.
I have focused here more on identifying a range of companies that merit further investigation than further exploration or two or three. By surveying many we have a better chance of locating the few that are the best fit, as opposed to simply the most obvious.