Capacity building: Goals of this study

The Earlville Opera House is engaged in a three year PACE project with the help of the Central New York Community Foundation.  The EOH three-year goal is excellent, effective marketing and public relations to promote the programs that are the lifeblood of the organization in concert with changes to the EOH name/brand that will reinforce EOH programming goals to reach out to youth and young families. By building audiences for programs, we hope to also attract new members, donors and volunteers resulting in a stronger organization.  

Earlville Opera House: Background

Our greatest challenge is our location in a rural area.  This issue of marketing and audience development is the most immediate for us to tackle because our programs are the lifeblood of the organization.  Nearly 50% of the organization’s income is earned income from programs that rely on effective outreach.  An additional 15% comes from donations solicited and maintained through the organization’s database and these contacts are found through attendance at performances and workshops.  Combined our marketing has an impact on 65% of the organization’s revenue stream.

Effective marketing has had a measurable impact in the past.  In 2006, before I Love New York guidelines changed, EOH received substantial matching funding for expanded advertising.  Here’s an excerpt from a 2006 report to the board: “Tourism is defined in NYS as drawing people from outside your state or outside your county to your destination.  The EOH website has allowed us to have better data than ever before about the people who come to our performances.  This summer over 1000 people came from 29 counties and 11 states to the Earlville Opera House.  For our paid performances, this represents about 25% of our patrons are not from our immediate community of Madison and Chenango counties.”  When I Love NY guidelines changed in 2007, we could no longer maintain the expanded level of marketing, but we learned what expanded marketing outside our rural area could achieve.

In part, our rural base is part of our problem sustaining programs without additional outreach – we are in Chenango County, the last county in the Appalachian designation.  Earlville has 791 people, and our closest population centers are five miles on either side: Hamilton with 3750 and Sherburne with 4000.   Significant income factors limit an extensive advertising budget including the fact that there are relatively few granting organizations or businesses to support the arts center in the countryside.  

Another challenge is that the EOH audience is recognized to be aging.  New outreach to younger audiences was recognized as a priority for the organization and in 2005 ticket price policy was changed to give priority to youth and then to members who support the organization.  Senior discounts were removed.  The organization must learn better marketing techniques to youth to match programming goals.

Patricia Lockwood-Blais, Executive Director