So let me start with an example from the Ailey Organization. As I said, I got to Alvin Ailey in 1991 and the Ailey Company was in a real mess at 1991. Alvin had passed away just over a year before. Judith Jamison was our new artistic director. There was no money, we owed $1.5 million. It was really one of those situations where you came in every day not knowing if you were going to be able to stay solvent for the week let alone for the longer term. And when I was interviewed for the job my board and my staff were sort of confused I'd say. Because they said we're Alvin Ailey, everyone's heard of Alvin Ailey. How can we be in such difficulty? Why is there no money here? And we're famous, we tour the world, we tour the United States. And then shortly after I arrived the author Alex Hailey died you know Alex Hailey is the author of the book Roots. And we got thousands of letters of condolence because people thought that Alex Haley was Alvin Hailey. And that told us that we are not quite as famous as we thought we were. There was and that's true about all of us in the arts. We think everyone reads every article, sees every newspaper thing, sees every brochure we send out. And the truth is, not so much and so, we have to be very humble about our organizations. And I said, okay, well, if people think we wrote Roots, I got to do something about this because we didn't. And it's clear that we're not going to get a lot of contributions if people are confused about our organization. So I put in place a one year institutional marketing effort that I'm going to describe in some detail. Not because I think you're going to copy each item But I want you to get your mind thinking about the kinds of things one can do. And it started in December of 1992. When we got on the Phil Donahue Show. Some of you are old enough to remember Phil Donahue. He was the person before Oprah. >> [LAUGH] >> And we got a whole hour on the Donahue Show, now how did we do that? We did that because I am an obsessive reviewer of who likes the work of my organization. I am constantly looking at who came to our performances. Who came to our exhibitions? Who came to our classes? I find arts organizations don't look at their data enough of who's there. And as a result, when we say who we're going to look for to raise money from we always list the 20 richest people in our city or in the country. And you know what, Bill Gates isn't going to give any of us a penny for the arts, he doesn't fund the arts, so take him off the list. I'd rather not waste my time trying to get to Bill Gates or to any of these super rich. I'm trying to get to people who like my work. So I'm looking at who comes and I'm trying to figure who's coming and who may have some resources to help or may have some inclination to help. And what we noticed was there was this one woman who kept coming and as we started to study who she was. Turns out she was a producer, one of the producers of the Donahue Show. So that bells going off in my head, this is not someone who's going to give us money but this maybe someone who would get us under show. And we spent a year and a half cultivating her and working up and finally getting under show. It takes work but it was worth it, 18 million people watch for an hour as Judith Jameson was interviewed by Phil Donahue. As our dancers danced on this little bitty stage, he danced a little which was not so good. But it was a great thing, the problem is when you just do something like that you do one thing and that's it. Doesn't have much of an impact, we think it does. We say, we were on this TV show or we had a great article. The problem is, there is so much news these days you can't rely on one thing. You got to do it again, you got to do it again, you got to do it again and you got to do it again. So the next month in January of 93 was President Clinton's first inauguration. And I found out one of my board members was involved with the campaign, was a donor to the campaign. Called him up, said Ken is there going to be some kind of event around the inauguration that we could participate in? I knew there would be something, there always is. I said what I think it would be great for Ailey to be part of that. And so he said, well, there's this guy who'd going to run the whole inauguration but no one's ever heard of him, his name is Rahm Emanuel. Who now is the Mayor of Chicago but at that point, no one had ever heard of Rahm Emanuel. And so, I called up Mr. Emanuel and I said, we would love to be in the gala. Good news, Ailey's available, so you just tell us where we should show up and he didn't want to do with me. So he pushed me off of the matter, I was actually producing the performance that was going to happen a night before, I mean in Garry Smith. So I called at Garry Smith, I said, Garry, good news, round you manual said we should be in the Garry. So here we are. [LAUGH] >> And Gary Smith did not want us on the worst way on his gala because he already had Michael Jackson and Barbara Streisand and Fleetwood Mac and Aretha Franklin and on and on and on and on and on. And he didn't want to have this little dance company and so, he said to me, he didn't say no because he was embarrassed to say no which was his big mistake. So what he said was, you could only have three minutes and I know there's no dance one can do in three minutes. So I went running to do the and I said we can have three minutes in the gala. And revelations is our most famous piece and there's a section at the end where the dancer's are all dressed in yellow and they sing to Rock-a My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham. And there's a way to shorten that section to three minutes. It's longer than three minutes so you can make it three minutes. I call up Gary, Gary, good news, we got the three minutes, he was really upset. >> [LAUGH] >> He said, well, I would need a video in costume tomorrow and you can't do that, so no. So we ran in the studio, threw the dancers' costumes on, did the three minutes, sent him the video. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. We got on the gala, two great things about it. Well, first of all it was a lot of fun. Secondly, I got to touch Michael Jackson, that was so exciting. Second thing was, we had 88 million people saw that television show on CBS in primetime. But, what was really important was I knew there was going to be a lot of press coverage of this event because of all these celebrities and because President Clinton was just being inaugurated the next day. And I knew there'd be a finale where there'd be a line up on the stage with President Clinton in the middle. And Michael Jackson here and Barbara Streisand here and all the artists like that. I knew they were going to stick my dancers in the back, so I told my dancers they would all get a present if they got to the front of the line. And so actually if you go online and look at the pictures what you see is President Clinton, all my dancers in their yellow costumes. And poor Michael Jackson in the back fighting for his life as my dancers are pushing him to the back and they all got a gift. >> [LAUGH] >> Why do I tell you a story in detail? I tell you because these things sound fun when you tell about them, they're a lot of work and with limited staffs they're a lot of work so, I know they're not easy. But you know what they change people's minds, they really do, they get people excited. And coming the new run after that the done you show that's pretty poem that. In March of 93, we weren't done yet though, in March of 93, we did a big exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. It's actually an exhibition I created for New York that was moved to the Smithsonian and talked about the very humble beginnings of the Ailey company in 1958. And how it had grown and become a major cultural ambassador for the country. And how the State Department made us change the name from the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater because they wanted the word American as when we tour the world. And it was a really interesting exhibition about the history of the organization. I love exhibitions, any arts organization can do an exhibition. You all have a big anniversary every 5 years, this was our 35th not a major number but we made it a major number. And I love exhibitions particularly for performing arts organizations because in the performing arts we have to recreate the performance everyday. Whereas, we do and exhibition and you can leave it up for two, three months it's something to bring donor's to, something to bring the press to. You don't have to we keep remaking it and so, I really love the notion of showing what you do, showing your work, showing your photographs. Your posters, your costumes, what you created for the community, how you engage people. That can be a really wonderful tool for explaining who you are. In July of 93, we did a big free concert in Central Park. The concert, as I said it was our 35th anniversary, it turns out that one of our corporate sponsors Phillip Morris was celebrating its 35th anniversary of giving money to the arts. So I went to them, and I said, wouldn't this be a great way for you to celebrate your 35th anniversary by funding a concert for New York? Let's make it free. Everyone can come to in fact, 35,000 people came to it and CNN came and did a little story about it and ran it 48 times. It was a 2 minute story, they ran 48 times over the next 24 hours. Every half hour we were on CNN nationwide and worldwide. That was Central Park. In August of 93, the City of New York named our street Alvin Ailey Place. West 61st Street is still Alvin Ailey Place even though Alvin Ailey has moved to built its own building. But the company had it's street named, it was pressed, there was a ceremony, they took the sign off, all that good stuff. In November of 93, 2 books were published about the organization. One was Judith Jameson's autobiography. One was a book of photographs by a man named Jack Mitchell who'd been photographing Ailey since 1960. So almost since it's beginning and it was a whole history of alien photographs. And in December of 93, exactly 1 year after Donahue, was our 35th anniversary season. And we opened with a big gala with Dionne Warwick, Al Jarreau, and Jessye Norman singing Revelations and Denzel Washington, Phylicia Rashad as their hosts. And writing and reading a poem and a new work that you Judith created with Anna Deavere Smith. So it was a extravaganza, everywhere you turned in that year, Ailey was out there. In 1992, before we did all this, we raised $1.7 million for the year. By the way, we have raise $1.7 million every year in a row for 5 years. When I was started there, I was told by board, you will never raise more than $1.7 million, that's all, there is no world for Alvin Ailey. So just get used to it, I didn't believed that. We did all this worked and that year we raised $3.4 million. We doubled our fundraising, it was a $1.7 million increase. That 1.7 paid off the entire historic deficit of $1.5 million and left a little left over and by the way there were no big gifts. This was all $50, $100, a few bigger ones, but no like million dollar unrepeatable gift. These were all repeatable gifts.
