Will It Make a Theatre?

By  Eldon Elder

Guidance for

Running a successful nonprofit organization is challenging. A business plan is one tool that helps steer your organization in the right direction. It clearly articulates your goals and details how to accomplish them.

It also shows external stakeholders that you’re serious about your nonprofit and reassures them that they can work with you or provide you with funding.

This guide helps you through the steps of writing an effective nonprofit business plan. 
 

A business plan is a roadmap. It shows where your organization is now, where you want to go, and how to get there.

While it may be best to write your own business plan from scratch (see the Resource Library article, "Writing a Nonprofit Business Plan"), this MS Word template provides the essentials, along with prompts to add specific details relating to your own organization. Like all templates, it cannot take into account all the variables that affect a specific organization, but it does allow you to edit so that it reflects your organization more effectively.

Creating a strong board requires many key ingredients, including the existence of a thoughtful and inclusive nominating or governance committee. In some cases, if an organization doesn’t have a nominating committee in place, the executive committee may fill the role of suggesting prospective board members in collaboration with the executive leadership team. It is extremely important that any group charged with identifying, cultivating, and recruiting board members takes the time needed to engage in a thorough selection process.

Every theatre should have a Disaster Plan to help guide you through the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as Hamlet would say. It’s important to imagine the worst things that could happen and then the resources you need to recover from them.

According to statistics, 40% of small businesses don’t immediately open after a disaster, and of those, 25% close within a year, and 75% fail within three years.

As theatre leaders, we have all “hit the wall,” slamming into an emergency or a crisis so hard that we think to ourselves, “It’s impossible –my theatre will never come back from this.” Certainly COVID-19 was an experience of uncertainty common to all of us as we worked through that astonishing time together.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) protects people with disabilities from discrimination. 

This easy-to-understand document was written by Steven John Fellman, ADA Counsel, National Association of Theatre Owners.  It covers almost every area of a theatre in terms of ADA requirements.

This five-page article by Geoffrey Kiel and James Beck provides a practical framework of key questions that boards should consider when planning an evaluation. It explains the he value of properly conducted board evaluations, as well as the importance of the board evaluation process in providing meaningful results.

This classic 49-page booklet from the Independent Center provides a comprehensive set of principles, whose  purpose is to reinforce a common understanding of transparency, accountability, and good governance for the sector as a whole—not only to ensure ethical and trustworthy behavior, but equally important, to spotlight strong practices that contribute to the effectiveness, durability, and broad popular support for charitable organizations of all kinds.

In this classic booklet, Kenneth N. Dayton explains " Governance is governance. That’s more than a title—it’s a deeply held conviction. It’s a
conviction first of all that governance is not management and, second, that governance in the not-for-profit sector is absolutely identical to