A letter to our Bard-a-thon participants

Hey there Bard-a-thon readers/fund raisers!

I wanted to check in with you and say thanks for helping us with this unique and grueling fund raiser for NC Stage. I also want to tell you that we still have some interesting roles available for reading (come on! 4am Titus everyone! It’s gonna raaawk!) so here’s a link to a google doc for info on still available roles. Feel free to send it to anyone you know who might be interested in participating.

Some cool things happening around the event:

I’m setting up a Livestream.com channel for NC Stage and, like last year, the Bard-a-lution will not be televised, but it will be streamed live over the interweb. But, unlike last year, more people will be able to watch at one time and you can also chat with other viewers in real time about what’s going on.

For those of you who do the tweets, I’ll be setting up a live feed from my TweetDeck and I’ve started a hashtag, #bardathon, to track any comments that come through. I’ll have the laptop hooked up to the projector and we can see any tweets that pop up regarding the Bardathon. So feel free to bring your phones, laptops, etc. and join in all the interconnected twittering fun. Come follow us on Twitter at @ncstage

Now to the core matter of this exercise: Raising money!!!

Since this is a fundraiser I thought I’d start a little check in process for all of us to share successes, challenges, tips, etc. as we go around asking our friends, families, stranger to sponsor us. So this letter will be posted on the NC Stage blog and we can all use the comments section to communicate with each other about advice or tips or updates.

First off I hope you are aware of the absolutely fantastic prizes that have been donated for the various categories of highest funds raised. If not, check them out here

Our goal is to raise over $7,000. So let’s do a little math. There are 26 participants so far in this year’s Bard-a-thon. Each participant would need to raise $270 for us to reach that goal. If each person got 14 sponsors at $20 each the goal would be met.

So, you get the idea, right? You can break it apart any way you like but the point is, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!

So you can ask people who will sponsor because they know you. Or you can appeal to someone’s philanthropic nature in general or because they like theatre, the arts or NC Stage in particular. If you’re in need of some talking poins for NC Stage, consider this: NC Stage is a professional, not for profit, 501(c)3 theatre; Contributions are tax deductible; We’ve produced over 30 productions and hired more than 300 artists; Our education program, Stages, has reached over 15,000 students in WNC with residencies and student performances covering subjects from Shakespeare to geometry!; NC Stage has donated thousands of dollars worth of tickets for local charity fundraisers for groups like WNCAP, MANNA Food Bank, YWCA of Asheville, The Mediation Center and Rotary Club of Asheville, , and NC Stage supports other local theatres every year with $14,000 of its own money through the Catalyst Series.

So that’s just a little update and check in. Hope you’ll join me on the blog and thanks again for helping NC Stage with this. It’s a rough time out there but with your help we’ll be able to start things off really well this year.

Charlie