The Intiman Theater in Seattle, which is fighting for its survival, announced on Thursday that it had raised just over $450,000 so far in a seven-week emergency fundraising campaign and would stay open. The Intiman had previously said that it needed to raise $500,000 by the end of March and another $500,000 by September in order to keep operating, but apparently this was close enough. A press release said that the remaining $50,000 would be added to the next benchmark.
“Raising more than $450,000 in seven weeks and over $250,000 in one week is a clear signal that encourages us to keep moving forward,” the board president, Kim Anderson, said in a statement.
The theater was helped by a $100,000 challenge gift from an anonymous donor, which it said on Thursday that it had met.
The Intiman also announced that it had hired a turnaround expert, Susan Trapnell of the Arts Consulting Group, to help the board and the artistic director, Kate Whoriskey, come up with a long-term financial plan for the theater. Ms. Trapnell was the managing director of another local company, A Contemporary Theater, for almost two decades, until 1999, and was called to ACT in 2003 to bring it back from near bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, Melaine Bennett, the Intiman’s former development director, who was enlisted late last year to serve as interim managing director, will depart.
In mid-February, the Intiman announced that it was facing an immediate cash crisis and set the fundraising benchmarks it needed to meet to survive. The board at first blamed the crisis on a former managing director, who left in November. More recently, it has acknowledged that the theater has had a long-term habit of spending more money than it made in contributions and ticket sales. In recent years, the Intiman has operated on a budget of $5 million to $5.5 million; in the future, the board says, the budget will only be $4 million.
Last Friday, the Intiman opened the first production of its 2011 season, Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.”