Give an arts organization $1000 and they’ll put your name in the program. Buy $1000 worth of tickets and they’ll tell you that the cost of your ticket only covered 55 percent (or 40 percent or 30 percent) of the cost of you being there. Then a few months later, long after the performance, they try to hit you up for more money. Gee thanks.

Maybe this is backwards. Who’s the more valuable member of your community? The person who gives you money but otherwise doesn’t have much to do with you, or the person who buys tickets and shows up for every performance? A thousand dollar donation is the same as $1000 of ticket revenue in the bank. Except it isn’t.

via More Valuable – The Ticket Buyer Or The Donor? – diacritical .