Arizona Opera has signed on one of the state’s largest workers’ compensation insurers to a four-year deal as a season title sponsor, a move that will effectively erase the biggest debt from the company’s longterm deficit.
Arizona Opera has had a $1.6 million revolving line of credit with CopperPoint Mutual, formerly SCF Arizona, since 2007. At the end of the four-year deal, which runs through the 2017-18 season, that debt will be erased. Under the agreement, CopperPoint will appear in all marketing materials for the opera’s seasons, including the season brochures.
CopperPoint, the state’s oldest and largest workers’ compensation insurer, went private and changed its name from SCF in December.
Arizona Opera has been paying the debt service to its CopperPoint line of credit, but little else over the past several years. The nonprofit, which mounts productions in Tucson and Phoenix, had $3.2 million in long-term debt when Ryan Taylor took office last spring, following Scott Altman‘s abrupt departure.
In May, Taylor and the opera’s board of directors launched an emergency fundraising campaign dubbed “Million Dollar May.” Over six weeks, the company raised $1 million in donations, which erased a third of the company’s deficit.
CopperPoint CEO Donald Smith was not available to comment, but in a written statement he said the sponsorship is an endorsement of the company’s new leadership and direction that “deserve the support of Arizona’s business community.”
“We are proud to extend our relationship with (Arizona Opera) into the future,” he said. “CopperPoint hopes to help stabilize Arizona Opera’s finances to allow it to continue to expand programming for Arizona’s growing ethnic and geographic communities.”
Taylor said the CopperPoint sponsorship “will significantly reduce our debt. I would hope by the end of this season we will have formulated a complete plan and we will be significantly closer.” He added that the company could end this season in the black.
“Our sales are looking good and this is the first year … where our total number of new donors to the opera has exceeded the number of lapsed donors,” he said.
The opera listed 1,069 donors on its most recent financial reports. Of those, 270 are new this year and another 201 are returning donors who did not give to the company last year, according to Arizona Opera financial records.
