Fund-Raisers Take Creative Tack

When Colleen Finnegan, the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s development director, moved here four years ago, she attended a town meeting of the arts held by patron Danah Fayman. A lot of hand wringing went on. Finnegan recalls people moaning, “How can we be America’s Finest City” when so few are contributing to the arts?

The feeling among arts institution development directors--those staff people who help design and implement a fund-raising plan--is that historically few individuals or businesses contribute to the arts in San Diego.

“I think fund raising in the arts in San Diego is tough,” said Jane Rice, deputy director of the San Diego Museum of Art. The listing of San Diego as the country’s eighth largest city is misleading, she said. Its metropolitan population ranks 20th. “Although San Diego is California’s second-largest city, we only have 2% of the foundation resources. And there is no large base of corporate headquarters here.”

Rice pointed out that San Diego is a major retirement community for the very wealthy. “But their money is in foundations in the cities they left behind--New York or Chicago or wherever they came from. They’ve already done their part on boards. . . . They came here to retire and relax--not to participate so actively in the arts.”

Despite the problems, the cultural arts in San Diego have boomed over the past decade. The question arises: How deep are the pockets that underwrite the arts here?

The operating budgets of the city’s major arts organizations have zoomed upward. The San Diego Opera is one of the nation’s top 10 regional opera troupes. The Old Globe Theatre is now among the first-rank regional theaters. Since 1978 the Globe has built or rebuilt $9.2 million worth of theaters--all of it from donations.

Only three years ago, the La Jolla Playhouse, after 19 years of dormancy, reopened with an ambitious, eclectic summer theater program that quickly garnered national attention.

In the visual arts, with the planned 1987 opening downtown of The Art Center in the Balboa Theatre, the city will get another contemporary art museum to complement the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.

The San Diego Repertory Theatre, 10 years ago a fledgling stage company operating on a $25,000 budget, has grown faster than any other local arts organization. Within months it will occupy the new Lyceum Theatre complex in Horton Plaza. Its budget today: $1.1 million.

And next Saturday the San Diego Symphony moves into the former Fox Theatre in a greatly expanded season. To cover the costs of purchasing and converting the theater to an orchestra hall, it has mounted a capital campaign with a goal of $6.5 million, while its operating budget has doubled in four years to $7.9 million. Donors--including private and governmental--are expected to contribute at least $2.5 million of that, more than is demanded by any other San Diego arts organization.

When asked, none of the development directors interviewed said San Diego was near hitting a dry well in fund raising, even though they must compete fiercely with hospitals, universities, the San Diego Zoological Society, the United Way and other health and social welfare charities for scarce dollars. The trick, the arts fund-raisers say, is to work smarter.

One tack has been to increase the base of membership support through seductive enticements. The opera, as part of a five-year plan drafted in 1984, decided to boost its membership income, which had stabilized at $300,000. Part of that plan was to use such benefits to members as discounts on magazines and records at local record stores. In its biggest coup, the opera persuaded five of San Diego’s top restaurants--Gustaf Anders, Sheppard’s, the Maison Ann Marie, Piret’s and the Tambo de Oro--to offer a free meal to every new or renewing member. In two years membership income almost doubled, said the opera’s development director, Ann Spira.

“You have to be more creative in San Diego, where there isn’t a great history of fund raising,” said Rice, the San Diego Museum of Art’s deputy director. In five years, the museum has increased its membership base from 4,000 to 9,200, which equals $400,000 in income, she said.

“San Diego has expanded so dramatically in the past five years that the growth has created a synergy in organizations,” said the Old Globe’s development director, Cassie Solomon. “We’re one of the stops for executives and spouses when companies are trying to recruit people to come here.” That makes it easier, she said, to go to those companies for money.

A key to the long-term survival of arts organizations is an endowment, said the opera’s Spira.

The San Diego Museum of Art already has a $6 million endowment fund. One problem with endowments is that a troubled organization may be forced to tap the principal of the fund, as the San Diego Symphony did in 1977.

Since then, the symphony has reestablished an endowment that is protected by the San Diego Community Foundation. The community foundation, created 10 years ago to serve San Diego’s charitable needs, has recently begun to grow at a surprising rate.

“Four years ago we had $1.5 million in the endowment,” said Helen Monroe, the fund’s executive director. At that time the fund projected a $5 million endowment for 1985. This year the fund hit $20 million.

“There is money in this community,” Monroe said. “More people are coming into San Diego, bringing wealth from other parts of the country . . . .”