Funding Your Fieldtrip
As we enter “budget season” Ovations knows that cost is often the biggest hurdle when it comes to field trips. Between tickets and busses, it can add up fast and finding funding takes up precious time and resources. We see how much this stress impacts everyone who brings students to our performances. The good news: there’s real funding available to help cover these costs.
Portland Ovations has put together a helpful page of funding opportunities, including our own travel subsidy Destination Portland, which offers up to $400 toward transportation costs. Click here to view our webpage with the full list of funding opportunities.
- Destination Portland – transportation subsidization
- School District Educational Foundations – district-specific grants
- State and National Grants
If you want help figuring out which option might be the best fit for your school, please reach out, we are happy to talk it through with you. Reach out to Liz Schildkret, Director of School & Family Programs at Portland Ovations by emailing eshildkret@portlandovations.org or calling 207-773-3150 X3.
Breaking down the cost of School-Time Performances
You’ve probably heard us say that we rely on Ovations Membership to keep ticket prices low for our School-Time Performances. You may have also heard that ticket sales cover roughly one third of the total cost of production and wondered: what does a School-Time Performance actually cost Ovations, and where does the money go?
The average total cost to present a single School-Time Performance is $45,000. At $10 a ticket, a well-sold performance brings in around $14,000, which means we’re covering the remaining $31,000 through Memberships, grants, POP Annual Fundraiser, and corporate sponsorship.
- 50% – Artist Fees: The biggest portion of this cost goes directly to the artists for their performance fees, travel, and housing while in Portland. Additionally, we try to provide artists with at least one meal while they’re here, because it matters to us that artists feel welcome in our space and our city.
- 40% – Production Costs: Most of the remaining cost is for the production itself. When you’re watching a show at Merrill Auditorium, everything you see and hear, the lighting and sound, the projectors and screens, has been rented and brought in specifically for that production. We pay for all of that equipment, and for the master electricians and sound technicians who run it. We pay stagehands to assist touring companies in building and taking down their sets and moving set pieces around during the production. They work long days unloading trucks early in the morning, working through the performance, and then taking everything down and loading trucks late into the night. We also pay a venue rental fee.
- 10% – Misc. Costs: The smallest slice of cost pays for things like marketing, insurance, and a fee to shut down Myrtle street for school bus parking.
