The Change Did One Center Good : Fund raising: Providence, R.I., facility threw out its no-rock rule to broaden its base of supporters.

It is a private, nonprofit corporation that gets no government funds. It seats about 3,000 people and is the premiere concert hall in its community, offering regional and touring classical music and dance ensembles along with touring Broadway musicals.

Built through efforts led by some of the area’s oldest and richest property owners, it is in a market where the dominant city is an hour away.

And it allowed neither contemporary pop nor rock music.

The description doesn’t just fit the Orange County Performing Arts Center. It also applies to Rhode Island’s Providence Performing Arts Center.

And Providence, it turns out, is a case study of how programming can be changed with no ill effects--and, indeed, significant benefits--to the institution’s stature and finances.

The change began in 1983 when directors of the Providence center, having run up $750,000 in losses, hired J. Lynn Singleton as director. Singleton recalls telling his board: “If you want to run this place like a private club, you’d better expect to have to pay for it.

“Otherwise, you have to expand the board and bring all elements of the community in.”

According to its latest financial report, Orange County’s Center remains in the black, but nearly $5 million in private donations were required to cover the gap between expenses and revenue from the box office. Like Providence then, Orange County Center officials now say they are looking for a way to broaden their base of supporters.

Part of Singleton’s solution in Providence: jettison the “no-rock” rule.

“I came from facilities that had always included rock music,” Singleton recalls, “and I told (the board) that it’s an ideal way to generate revenue, though you’ve got to make resonable decisions and do it carefully.”

It wasn’t an easy sell.

Joe Kruse, one of the Providence center’s original trustees, remembers that “there was some caution initially over what may happen, in that there were certain other facilities in the city that were drawing people who were not appreciative of their buildings.”

But “we didn’t want to hold ourselves out as elitists who said this building was only for the preferred,” continued Kruse, senior vice president of the G. William Miller Co., a large banking firm headed by the former U.S. secretary of the Treasury. “That’s not the mission of this building, which is broad-based programming that appeals to the whole community.

“That’s why we went looking for fellows like Lynn Singleton, who could choose the right programming that would be a success.” Then, taking Singleton’s advice, “we loosened up a little, had one (pop concert) and then had some more,” Kruse said.

Several years since the decision to allow pop and rock, “we don’t have any more concerns about it,” said Kruse, who is still on the board. “In fact, I don’t think I’ve had a conversation on the subject in a couple of years.”

Currently, Singleton said, the Providence center books about 30 rock and pop shows a year, ranging from rock band INXS and rapper Vanilla Ice to pop duo Hall & Oates and country singer K.D. Lang. Most of the schedule is still devoted to regional dance and symphonic groups; touring companies including New York City Opera, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Hague Philharmonic, and many of the same Broadway tours that stop in Orange County.

The mix, says Singleton, is important for fund-raising reasons.

“Times are tough, and money is tight. I find in fund-raising it’s extremely difficult to go out and raise money for an arts center when you are up against people who are raising money for starving children. It’s a tough sell. When you hit that level with individuals, with corporations and foundations, then you’ve got to diversify.”