Hello, Erica is here.

Can anybody hear me?

Your room is muted.

Can you hear us?

I can hear you now, yes.

Okay, sorry about that.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

So Eric, I'm just telling them some good stuff about season 74 here.

Okay, awesome.

Awesome.

So yeah, um, really healthy sponsorships, and we're hoping that most of those will run new, and we do have some new season sponsors already lined up for season 75, which of course is a huge milestone that we're really excited to be celebrating.

Our donations have really grown in the last year.

That has been a major focus of my onboarding.

Um, I think that we have amazing community support, uh, but just that sort of day donation branch of our work has hasn't quite been as nurtured because capacity issues with our small staff.

And so that's been something I've been really trying to take a advantage of and build those relationships out.

So I do have some facts about that.

You know, we've got 20% more annual donations um compared to last season, 35% more unique donors compared to last season, and um, we have some new recurring donations, which again recurring donations are just so important to uh nonprofit helps us really plan and also stabilize for unexpected challenges, like you mentioned for Gotheri Experienced.

So yeah, we're excited to see that grow.

Um couple of things that I think are worth highlighting about season 74.

We have 25 sold-out performances, we had six school matinees that were really well attended for our theater for young audiences, um, four free engagement or enrichment events, and um then we hosted 58 community partner events at our our facility.

So when you add up our public events as well as those community partner events, it's just a lot of a lot of active days over in the building where people could come and take advantage of what we produce or what other community partners are offering.

Um yeah, some finances things.

Um our expenses are right in line with what we budgeted, which is great.

Um, ticket sales, which is a major contributor to our um our earned revenue, right?

Um, have been a little under what we had expected.

Um, I think there's a couple of things going on there.

We did have a few sell-out shows and we did have some shows that performed over expectations, and then we had a few shows that were under expectations.

So when it's all said and done, we're a little below what we wanted our earned revenue to to be.

Um, I do think there's a couple of challenges that we faced this year that have um contributed to that.

One is we have an issue with third-party sellers, which we know is an ongoing issue for the state, the nation, etc.

Um, I happen to serve on the board of Minnesota System for the Arts, and I know that that's something that they're working on as well.

Um, so I'm hoping that with new legislation that can actually help us and protect us further.

So hopefully that challenge will be addressed kind of outside of the way our organization can, but we're doing everything we can, and of course, just making sure our community and teaching our community about that so they're not being taken advantage of is a huge part of the work.

So that has been a major teller because I um issue because I think that that actually people sign on, they Google, and then they say, oh, 200 for a ticket.

I can't afford that.

Well, in actuality, it's 37.

So we'll never be more than 37.

So if they had known that, they may have bought, right?

But they stopped there.

So we've we're doing what we can to um, you know, just teach and make sure people know that we work really hard and our donors work really hard and our grants work really hard to keep those ticket sales, um, those ticket prices low.

Um, I also think that economic concerns have played a contributing factor as well to that, um, just because it's so outlandish, sort of some of the lows that we saw this year.

And I just think it's people feeling a little bit more tight and they're being a little more restricted about how they put their money out, and which is understandable.

So that as well as rising costs that affects all of us, including the nonprofit sector, um, even organizations that are putting, you know, all that money right into the stage and all that.

So that's, I think those are the kind of overarching things.

Um, some very cool things that we're excited about for season 75 that I want you all to be aware of.

We are gonna do two new programming strands that will hopefully offer some again free access to um different offerings.

We're gonna do a new play reading series, probably two titles a year.

Um, our hope is that we can center diverse community issues with those play readings, so that uh again being able to partner with different community partners, being able to um just access arts in a different way.

Um, everybody loves big Barray musicals, but there's another part that theater can do, which is build that empathy about issues that are about racial diversity or about economic stress and all of those things.

So that's our hope with that new play series.

We may series we may be able to address that.

Um, we also are going to introduce um our cabaret nights, which is just going to be a fun way to kind of introduce maybe some musical titles that you wouldn't necessarily see on our show, but on our stage, but are worth you know having some good music.

Um, and then pay what you can performances.

That is a real big initiative that I think is really important.

We want to make sure that everybody in our community feels welcome at the Rochester Civic Theater.

And so pay what you can nights will help to remove that financial barrier.

We just ask people to pay literally whatever they can to get a ticket if that's a dollar, we want them to come see the show.

So um I'm working on lining up specific sponsors for that event because it of course comes with a little bit of financial risk for us, but we also feel like it is really important to make sure that what we do is accessible to the entire community.