Good news: the ISO website donation page now has information on the matching-grant challenge (for the current ISO contract to remain in effect, $5 million from new donors must be raised by February 3, 2003; an anonymous donor will match up to $500,000, so those of us potential small donors can have the impact of our gifts doubled).
That information went up yesterday afternoon, and it’s a great step. The Musicians of the ISO are actively promoting the $500,000 matching opportunity via email and their Facebook page and Twitter feed, and many of us are posting the links on our own pages.
Some friendly suggestions to build momentum:
- The ISO could publicize the campaign on its own Facebook page and its Twitter feed. (As of this writing, there has been nothing about it either place.)
- The ISO Musicians could publicize the campaign on their website. (As of this writing, there is nothing about it there, either. You could start with a simple link if you are waiting for something fancier from the ISO.)
- The ISO and/or their fundraising firm could make sure they’ve actually contacted everyone they think they already have contacted. An ISO musician forwarded me an internal ISO email, responding to my original blog post, which says that all single-ticket buyers have been mailed to and are being called. I’ve bought tickets twice in 2012, and still haven’t been contacted by the ISO itself. A colleague who is a pretty high-profile person in the regional arts world thanked me today for my “cranky guy” post and said, “I’ve bought tickets, and I haven’t heard anything from them, either!”
It’s December 12. It’s that time of the year to really sell new donors on charitable tax deductions for 2012. There are lots of opportunities for us to work with the ISO and the musicians (who to so many of us are the ISO) to meet these fund-raising goals.
Eric Edberg 