As officials with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra review their most recent fiscal year, they are also talking optimistically about the organization’s long term future.
Among the reasons for that optimism, the buzz around Music Director Ward Stare, who was hired in 2014.
Ralph Craviso is the Interim President and CEO of the orchestra. He says revenues for the upcoming RPO season are already sharply above where there were last year at this time. He attributes that in part to Stare and also the strategies being used to broaden the appeal of the RPO’s offerings.
But the orchestra still has financial pressures. Craviso says right now, if it weren’t for some one-time events, such as money from an endowment fund, the RPO would have a $1.4 million deficit. He says that’s why the RPO has developed a five year business plan.
“Our plan will be, that at the end of that five year plan we’ll be preparing for our 100th anniversary, and at that hundredth anniversary we’ll be moving in all likelihood toward an endowment drive having demonstrated to the community that we are fiscally stable and fiscally responsible.”
Craviso also credits the musicians who last fall agreed to continue a salary freeze in their contract. But he says the RPO is not retrenching.
In fact , he says they will add staff in the fundraising area to help drive revenue growth.
“We’re adding positions in our fundraising area in order to increase our capacity for fundraising; I think there’s a lot of room to grow there. I think on the ticket revenue side between programming and some innovative things we’re doing in terms of how we manage and sell our subscription packages.”
Craviso also says that in the new season, the RPO went back to 14 concerts for the philharmonic orchestra, since they had cut back to 12 concerts last year.
“When we put together the (2016-17) season we said, what we really need to do is we need to expand our classic product , we need to provide opportunities for revenue growth; we do that through programming and I think the preliminary results of our sales so far are bearing out that we made the right decision,” Craviso told WXXI News.
