Plan seeks to put symphony on route to success
To solve its stubborn financial problems, a city-county task force says the San Antonio Symphony needs to expand its donor base, collaborate more with other organizations, install permanent leadership and create more dynamic programming.
The nine-member task force, created by Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and Mayor Ron Nirenberg earlier this year, unveiled its strategic plan for the symphony Tuesday — a plan that orchestra officials said just was the first step toward gaining long-term fiscal stability.
Kathleen Weir Vale, chairwoman of the symphony board, said many of these goals already are under way. “We’ll get it done,” she said.
The plan calls on symphony leadership to: Develop outside-the-box programs. Suggestions include virtual reality experiences that put people in the middle of the orchestra during a performance, providing live music for concerts by pop stars and having a series of tweets prewritten by Music Director Sebastian Lang-Lessing to be posted throughout performances, giving people another entry point for the work.
Add to its marketing approaches to not just sell tickets to individual performances but to generate excitement about the symphony overall. That might include local celebrities, such as Spurs players, participating in marketing campaigns.
Expand its outreach offerings by leaving its home at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, where it is a resident company, to perform in different parts of the community. Treat everyone who attends a performance or contributes so well that they will feel more invested and want to get more involved, either as a volunteer or as a donor.
The task force also recommends that future public funding be contingent on the symphony implementing the plan and meeting a series of benchmarks over the next year, including hiring a full-time executive director by year’s end, create an advisory council of major donors, create an institutional marketing plan and install a fundraising process. The symphony board intends to implement the plan, Vale said, adding that those benchmarks are doable and that hiring a full-time executive director is at the top of the list.
Karina Bharne, who came in as interim executive director in January, is leaving to become executive director of Symphony Tacoma, a move that puts her much closer to her Vancouver-based husband. Bharne said she will be involved in the San Antonio Symphony’s dayto-day operations through July 7, but will to help out longdistance as long as she’s needed.
Bharne said the task force’s plan was “spot-on with what we need to do.”
The symphony has struggled with financial instability for decades. In December, plans collapsed for its management to be taken over by Symphonic Music for San Antonio, a nonprofit formed by major donors specifically to resolve those problems.
In a three-day span, the season was suspended when the symphony’s board announced it didn’t have the $2.5 million required to fulfill it, then was brought back for a shorter season thanks to an outpouring of support from the community. The season ended June 10.
One of the major financial issues not addressed by the strategic plan is the need to grow the symphony’s small endowment, which is administered by the San Antonio Area Foundation. Because of privacy restrictions, it’s unclear how much is in the endowment, but a 2016 San Antonio ExpressNews report put the amount at $1.83 million.
In an article earlier this year, Bharne, Nirenberg and LangLessing all cited growing the endowment as the only way for the symphony to remain stable long-term. Ideally, the endowment for a nonprofit should be three times its annual budget. The symphony’s current budget is about $7 million, which would call for an endowment in the $20 million range.
Still, Bharne said the strategic plan is the first step, and the endowment still is a pressing concern.
“That’s something that is definitely at the forefront of everyone’s minds,” she said. “We definitely recognize the need.”
Addressing the plan’s issues is key to long-term stability, said Michael Kaiser, a wellregarded arts consultant with the DeVos Institute of Arts Management in Washington, D.C., who was enlisted by the task force to develop the plan.
“I’ve spent most of my career working with troubled organizations,” Kaiser said at a media briefing Tuesday afternoon at City Hall. “And the things that create health for arts organizations, particularly those who have faced a bump (in the road), it starts with really good programming. A lot of people think it starts with cutting your budgets or saving money. It doesn’t. You don’t save your way to health with the arts. You excite people. You energize people, and that comes from the work itself.”
The plan grew from Kaiser’s own experience and his research into the San Antonio arts scene. That included interviews with more than 90 people, including community leaders, arts patrons and administrators and symphony musicians, board and staff.
The task force, led by chairman Denny Ware, includes Bexar County Commissioner Paul Elizondo and District 1 City Councilman Roberto C. Treviño. Six community members also took part: Elizabeth Fauerso, Suhail Arastu, Nissa Dunn, Mike De La Garza, Linda Chavez Thompson and
Alice Viroslav, who briefly served as chairwoman of the symphony board and was the one who scrapped last season.
The plan they developed will be presented to Commissioners Court in the next few weeks, Wolff said. City Council members are preparing to go on recess to work on the San Antonio budget, so it won’t be presented to them until the fall, Nirenberg said.
It is the third symphony task force that Wolff has been involved in during his long political career. This time, things feel different, he said.
“I’ve never seen, over the period of time that I’ve been involved in this, going back to ’87, the enthusiasm that came about from a wide range of people — almost 1,000 donors,” Wolff said. “I thought, ‘Wow, something has changed here.’ In other words, they weren’t just (relying) on one big company to give you money. So, I though, if this is sustainable, and we’ve got that kind of base, we can do it. We’ll see. But it’s a significant change.”