KW Chamber Orchestra & KW Symphony

[panamaniac]

Thanks for digging! Government grants at roughly 60%, ticket sales at 20% and donations at 20% of revenue. A drop in half of ticket sales would still only drop the total by about $500K, and presumably they would have access to prior years' surplus even then. And there has been no mention of government funding cutbacks.

So, the $2M gap is still a mystery.

If I were the sort who speculates, I'd start to wonder whether they haven't lost a government grant (although that would be made public), or have been hit by some wrongdoing?  

They have raised over $2million in the past, so they should be able to do it again.

[panamaniac]

So that's all she wrote - KWS has declared bankruptcy and no longer exists.

A very unfortunate day for Kitchener (and Waterloo).

[tomh009]

The "$2M required immediately" is a huge question. How did they get to this point?

The foundation appears to still exist so maybe they wipe out debts with bankruptcy and then start again? I have no idea though ...

[Spokes]

Wow, I didn't see bankrupcy coming.

The GoFundMe seemed like a bad choice because are they going to just ask for $2M in donations every year? What's the plan to not be in this same situation next year

[KevinL]

The GoFundMe isn't for the organization, it's to support the suddenly-unemployed artists.

[nms]

The GoFundMe campaign has now crossed $300k from 1800 donors.  That works out to a rough average of $100k/day.  I don't know if that is sustainable to reach the $2 million goal.  However, if it is, it puts paid to the Board's contention that there was no appetite in the community to fundraise $2 million dollars.

The entire Board resigning was a surprise.  I took a look at their biographies and they appeared to be pretty competent heavy hitters in the community.  The Chair, Rachel Smith-Spencer seemed to know her way around donors given her day job (per the KWS website) (also, I wonder if she had split loyalties when approaching a prospective donor, but that's only speculation):

Rachel Smith-Spencer joined the Stratford Festival as Senior Director of Advancement in October 2003.  In that role, she is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the Festival’s fundraising activities including annual support of $14 million, endowed giving, planned giving and special projects including its current $12 million Relaunch campaign addressing the challenges faced during the pandemic.

In 2020, under her direction, the Festival completed a $100 million campaign to build and support ongoing operations of its new state-of-the-art Tom Patterson Theatre.

Prior to coming to the Festival, she was the Assistant Dean, Alumni and Development for the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto and participated in the completion of Canada’s first $1 billion campaign in support of the university.

She spent over 17 seasons as Director of Development for symphony orchestras in Canada, including tenures at the Toronto Symphony and the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1985 to 1998).

She was born and raised in Preston, Ontario and received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Waterloo.

As far as bankruptcy goes, various other organizations or companies have gone bankrupt (or something similar) and come out the other side with the same name and carried on.

[plam]

As far as bankruptcy goes, various other organizations or companies have gone bankrupt (or something similar) and come out the other side with the same name and carried on.

I guess that in Canada "bankruptcy" doesn't mean the same thing as the US "Chapter 11 bankruptcy" where you get protection from creditors while you restructure (vs "Chapter 7" where you liquidate). Seems like we have CCAA for debts > $5M and a Division 1 Proposal for other cases, but they didn't say that. Someone could start a new KWS after this one liquidates though...

[tomh009]

Based on the article in the Record, they were surviving only on the federal COVID funding, and when that ran out ... I assume they tried to quietly raise money, but did not want to go public with it so as to avoid scaring off subscribers.

[nms]

The GoFundMe has reached $368,000 from 2100 donors.  I wonder if the Board is now regretting not having gone public earlier (though since they resigned en masse, perhaps they gave up).

The Grand Philharmonic is planning to hire the KWS musicians on a fee-for-service basis for their concerts (in the past, they paid a fixed fee to the Symphony organization).  I know that KW Glee partnered with the Symphony to provide music for their shows.  I don't know what other community partnerships also existed.

[panamaniac]

Bumping this thread to note that the KWSO has exceeded its fundraising goal ($480G) for the current fiscal year.