“The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra has released its results for the fiscal year, and the news is mostly good,” writes Sarah Bryan Miller in Friday’s (10/4) St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Operating revenue and the endowment are up; the deficit is down. The orchestra took two major tours in the year ending Sept. 30, to Europe and California, and hosted the annual conference of the League of American Orchestras. Those were covered by the presenting venues or by dedicated additional contributions. Regular operating revenue was up by 7.2 percent, for a total of $25.5 million. The SLSO reported a $2.62 million loss, down almost 7 percent from 2012. It’s the smallest deficit since 2005…. Stopgap funds have been raised outside the operating budget to pay off the deficit. Meanwhile, the endowment is up to almost $150 million (from $131 million).… The orchestra had earned revenue totaling almost $8 million, of which a little more than $6.5 million was from ticket sales. That’s a little down from 2012.… For the five years since CEO and president Fred Bronstein launched the ‘Building Our Business’ initiative in 2008, the trend is even more clear: a 29 percent increase in earned revenue, reversing the 32 percent decline for the years 2000 to 2008.”
Posted October 7, 2013
