A Tucson opera fan has offered an interesting fundraising challenge to Arizona Opera: If the company raises $400,000 in donations between now and June 30, it will get $100,000 from the anonymous Tucson donor.
The donor put up $50,000 earlier this month with the promise of another $50,000 at the campaign’s end.
“It was essentially a beginning and ending incentive,” said Arizona Opera General Director Ryan Taylor of the campaign, dubbed “50 for 500.” “They are providing the bread for the sandwich.”
But there’s a catch: The opera must get donations from all 50 U.S. states.
So how does a regional opera company seemingly so far removed from the American cultural epicenter attract the attention of folks from around the country?
One friend at a time, Taylor said.
That’s how Arizona Opera managed to get donations, ranging from several thousand dollars to $5 or $10, from residents in every state and three countries — Canada, Japan and Austria — during its Million Dollar May campaign last summer. Taylor said it was a matter of opera board members recruiting friends from coast to coast to donate.
The anonymous donor “thought it was remarkable. It was clear to them that people from around the country were paying attention to what was happening with the opera,” said Taylor. “It’s not the size of the gift, it’s the fact that people are paying attention to what we are doing.”
Since its launch in early April, the 50 for 500 campaign already has raised $74,000 toward the $400,000 goal, Taylor said.
The campaign follows two successful Million Dollar May fundraising drives — in 2013 and 2014 — that effectively wiped out Arizona Opera’s long-term debt that included $500,000 to BMO Harris Bank, $700,000 owed to board members who had loaned the company money and $1.4 million on a revolving line of credit owed to CopperPoint Mutual, formerly SCF Arizona, Taylor said. The CopperPoint debt, which dated to 2007, was erased last April when Arizona Opera signed a four-year season title sponsorship deal with CopperPoint — the state’s largest workers’ compensation insurer — that puts CopperPoint’s name on all of the opera’s marketing and promotional materials.
“We have a little bit of the board loans, I think $125,000, that we’ll pay out this year,” Taylor said.
Taylor said the 50 for 500 campaign will give the company a nice cushion going into next season, which kicks off with the premiere of Emmerich Kálmán’s “Arizona Lady” Oct. 10 and 11.
