Similarly, the gala for Performance Space New York was supposed to be on May 9 and was projected to raise $350,000, which is 17.5% of the organization’s $2 million annual budget. Before the organizers could even send out invitations, they delayed the gala indefinitely.
“We had to do a really quick meeting with our finance team and treasurer to make a contingency budget,” says Jenny Schlenzka, Performance Space’s executive artistic director. “We’re a small organization, so cash flow is always a big question.” The plan calls for emergency cuts in programming, travel, production, and marketing.
“We cut our budget in an extreme way so we can keep paying our staff and keep paying artists,” Schlenzka says.
Making Cuts
Before March the Tenement Museum spent about $1 million a month on operating costs. About 75% of its $11.5 million budget to cover these costs was supplied from ticket sales and its gift shop. Philanthropic contributions made up the remaining $3 million, of which “the single biggest item of that is the museum’s spring benefit, which has a net of over $700,000—it raises over $1 million,” says Morris Vogel, the museum’s president.
Now the benefit is canceled, and earned revenue has gone from more than $700,000 a month to zero. “This is an unmitigated horror for us,” Vogel says. “We looked brilliantly strong, because we were generating so much of our operating costs through our programs. Now it looks like an extraordinary vulnerability. We don’t have an endowment. We don’t have billions of dollars in reserves.”
As a result, the museum has slashed its operating budget, temporarily laying off more than 70 part-time workers, laying off 13 members of its full-time staff, and having much of its remaining employees come in every other week through June. “We’ve radically cut expenses,” Vogel says. “We’ve got an obligation to keep this place going.”
Losses on Multiple Fronts
The Tenement Museum isn’t the only one preparing for major losses.
The off-Broadway theater company Soho Rep was forced to cancel its spring fundraiser, which brings in about $250,000, an eighth of its overall budget. It already has about half of that number in cash sent in as pledges, but it’s still “pretty devastating,” says the theater’s executive director, Cynthia Flowers. “We’ve also lost ticket sales and subrental income.”
As the ban on large gatherings continues, Flowers says, “I don’t think there’s a not-for-profit theater in this city that’s not worried about the [long-term] existence of its organization.”
Even institutions that are in strong financial shape are projecting major cuts. After announcing that it will remain closed until July and canceling the star-studded, $15 million Costume Institute Gala, along with a series of other big-ticket fundraisers, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that it was expecting $100 million in losses, with layoffs “likely inevitable.”