on May 25th, 2008Arts Management
As President of the all-volunteer Board of Directors of Altarena Playhouse, an innovative theater in the round in Alameda, CA, I’ve learned a lot about the challenges of running a nonprofit arts organization, on both the artistic side and the business side.
Having experienced those challenges firsthand, in 2007 I created the Audience1st software system for managing not only online ticket sales but backoffice operations such as financial reporting, donor tracking and CRM. It’s 100% Web-based (zero installation for the theater), easily integrates with theaters’ existing Web sites in terms of both functionality (ticket purchase links, RSS feed of ticket availability, etc.) and look-and-feel (heavily CSS-styleable), it’s patron-friendly, and patrons can buy tickets online with a credit card without you having to establish a credit card relationship, all for only about $1 per ticket sold. It’s my way of keeping my code chops in some kind of shape while using them to put some good karma back into the arts community. Learn more about Audience1st and see which theaters are using it.
