How to Get Your Theater Board to Invest in Community Engagement

You know community engagement matters. You’ve read the research, you’ve seen the successful case studies, and you understand that building genuine relationships with your community creates sustainable audiences in ways Google ads never will.

But you’re sitting in a board meeting where someone just asked: “How many tickets did our last community event sell?”

And when you try to explain that community building takes time, that the ROI compounds over years not quarters, that you’re planting seeds for future harvests, you watch eyes glaze over. Someone interjects that the Facebook campaign last month drove 200 ticket sales for $1,500. Someone else asks if you’ve tried Instagram Reels. Then the conversation moves on.

Here’s the problem: your board isn’t wrong to care about immediate results. Theaters operate on razor-thin margins. And your Board’s job is to oversee the financial health of your theater. In their defense, cash flow matters. Quarterly revenue matters. Season ticket renewals matter. These aren’t unreasonable concerns.

But you find yourself frustrated because you know that they’re also not asking the right question.

The question isn’t “can we afford to invest in community engagement?” The question is “can we afford NOT to?”

I’m writing this as someone trying to break into theater marketing from nonprofit work. I’ve operated under budget constraints, and have helped partners find success within their own my entire career. I’ve had to justify every dollar spent, while also expected to turn that dollar into two. I’ve sat in meetings with clients where they are disheartened because their leadership wanted to see ROI by next month on work that takes years to mature. I’ve felt my own personal frustration with organizations where the missional  language didn’t match the internal actions because we talked about community while treating people as revenue sources.

So I’m not coming at this as someone with unlimited resources or idealistic assumptions. I’m coming at this as someone who understands the financial pressure AND knows that short-term thinking is killing theaters’ long-term sustainability.

This post is a follow up from my previous article, ‘How to Build Community Around Your Theater (Without a Big Marketing Budget)’ and will walk through exactly how to build the case for community engagement investment, structure a realistic phased approach that accounts for board skepticism, and identify whether your theater actually has the culture to sustain this work.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: the strategy isn’t the hard part. Getting organizational buy-in is the hard part.

Why Boards Resist Community Engagement (And Why They’re Not Entirely Wrong)

Let’s start with empathy for the board’s position.

Board members are typically successful business people, philanthropists, and community leaders. They’re used to making decisions based on measurable outcomes. They understand marketing in terms of cost per acquisition, conversion rates, and return on investment. These frameworks work in most business contexts.

Theater marketing looks like it should work the same way. You spend money on advertising. People buy tickets. You measure which channels drive the most sales per dollar spent. You optimize accordingly. Simple.

Except community engagement doesn’t work that way.

When you invest in community relationships, the value is:

• Delayed (shows up months or years later)
• Diffuse (hard to attribute to specific interactions)
• Qualitative (includes non-revenue benefits like reputation and goodwill)
• Compounding (grows exponentially over time rather than linearly)

This makes boards uncomfortable. They’re being asked to approve spending on something that won’t show clear ROI for 12-18 months minimum. Meanwhile, that same money could go toward those classic mailers that will drive ticket sales next week.

From their perspective, community engagement feels like a luxury. Something to do when you have extra budget. Not a core strategic investment.

They’re not being short-sighted or mercenary. They’re being responsible stewards of limited resources using the frameworks they know.

So your job isn’t to convince them they’re wrong about needing results. Your job is to reframe what “results” means and what timeline is realistic for building sustainable audiences.

The Real Cost of Short-Term Thinking

Here’s what happens when theaters optimize purely for immediate ticket sales:

You run discount campaigns that train audiences to never pay full price. You become dependent on paid advertising because you haven’t built organic word-of-mouth. You chase trending demographics with surface-level programming rather than serving your actual community. You burn through audiences who attend once but don’t return because they never felt connected to your mission.

You’re constantly acquiring new audiences because you’re not retaining the ones you have. And customer acquisition is always more expensive than customer retention.

This creates a vicious cycle: limited budget forces you to focus on short-term sales tactics, which fail to build loyalty, which means you’re constantly needing to acquire new audiences, which keeps your budget limited.

Community engagement breaks this cycle. But it requires believing that investing in relationships today creates more valuable audiences tomorrow than any paid advertising campaign ever will.

Let me give you the actual numbers that make this case.

The Math That Justifies Community Investment

Here’s the model I would present to a board when asking for a multi-year community engagement commitment:

Traditional Paid Marketing:

• Facebook ad spend: $30K annually
• Average cost per ticket sale: $15
• Tickets sold: 2,000 annually
• Average ticket price: $40
• Average lifetime value per acquired customer: 2.5 shows over 2 years
• Total tickets over 2 years: 4,000

Community Engagement Investment:

• Year 1: $20K (proof of concept)
• Year 2: $50K (scale with part-time coordinator)
• Year 3: $75K (full community engagement role)
• Total 3-year investment: $145K

Year 1 Results ($20K investment):

• Acquire 100 new households through community touchpoints
• Average attendance: 2 shows/year at $40/ticket
• Revenue: $8,000 (40% ROI in year 1)

Year 2 Results ($50K investment):

• Original 100 households: now 4 shows/year pattern = $16K
• New 200 households: 2 shows/year = $16K
• Total revenue: $32K (64% ROI in year 2)

Year 3 Results ($75K investment):

• Original 100 households: 5 shows/year = $20K
• Year 2’s 200 households: 4 shows/year = $32K
• New 300 households: 2 shows/year = $24K
• Total revenue: $76K (101% ROI in year 3)

By Year 4:

• You have 600 households with established attendance patterns
• Projected revenue: $120K+ annually
• Donor conversion from this community-connected audience
• Volunteer labor value
• Sponsorship relationships from business partnerships
• Earned media coverage from community presence

The difference: Traditional paid marketing gets you 4,000 ticket sales over 2 years with no loyalty and declining returns.

Community engagement gets you 600 households who attend an average of 4 shows per year (2,400 annual tickets), bring friends, volunteer, donate, and actively promote your theater.

The lifetime value isn’t even comparable.

But here’s the catch: Even I panicked crunching these imaginary numbers, and now you need board members willing to look at a 3-year model, not a quarterly model.

The Phased Approach That Accounts for Skepticism

Most boards won’t approve a $75K community engagement budget based on promise alone. They need proof.

So you build a phased approach that earns the right to scale.

Year 1: Proof of Concept ($20K)

What you’re buying: Permission to experiment and evidence to justify expansion.

Budget allocation:

• 2-3 deep anchor partnerships: $8K
• 1 local artist commission: $5K
• Volunteer training and recognition program: $3K
• Discretionary community impact fund: $4K

What success looks like:

• 15,000-20,000 community touchpoints
• 3 functioning partnership relationships with documented value
• 50+ volunteers trained in authentic conversation
• 100 new households in database from community sources
• Email list growth from community events
• Partnership depth stories and testimonials

What you’re NOT promising: Immediate ticket revenue spike. You’re building infrastructure.

How you frame it: “We’re investing $20K to build the audience relationship foundation that will drive sustainable ticket sales in Years 2-3. This year we’re planting seeds, not harvesting crops.”

Critical framing: Compare this to other marketing spend. If you’re spending $30K on Facebook ads that have declining returns and no loyalty building, redirecting $20K to community infrastructure is a strategic hedge, not a gamble.

Year 2: Add Capacity ($50K)

By the end of Year 1, you have data showing:

• Which partnerships generated the most engagement
• Which community events drove venue awareness
• Where your “Lego people” are taking shape
• Concrete stories of community members becoming ticket buyers

The ask: “Based on Year 1 success, we need a part-time Community Engagement Coordinator to scale this work. I can’t maintain this relationship-building pace while also running seasonal marketing campaigns.”

Budget breakdown:

• $25K salary for 20hr/week coordinator
• $25K programming (double Year 1 investment)
• Total: $50K

What success looks like:

• 40,000+ community touchpoints
• Track ticket conversion from community contacts
• Measure repeat attendance from new audience segments
• Document partnership ROI (earned media, in-kind support, co-promotion value)
• Increased volunteer retention and expansion

The shift: You’re not just building relationships anymore. You’re starting to show how those relationships convert to sustainable attendance patterns.

Year 3: Full Integration ($75K)

With two years of data, you can demonstrate:

• Ticket revenue directly attributed to community relationships
• Lifetime value comparison: community-sourced vs. paid advertising audiences
• Non-ticket value: sponsorships, volunteer labor, media coverage, donor conversion

The reframe: You’re not asking for “more community engagement budget.” You’re showing that community engagement IS your core marketing strategy, not an add-on.

Budget breakdown:

• $50K Community Engagement Coordinator (full-time)
• $25K programming
• Total: $75K

ROI justification:

• $76K in Year 3 ticket revenue, on track for $120K+ in Year 4
• $50K+ in earned media value
• Volunteer labor equivalent to $30K in staffing
• In-kind partnerships worth $20K
• Donor conversion pipeline established
• Projected total value: $220K+ annually by Year 4

Years 4-5: Sustainable Model

By Year 4, community engagement is integrated into how your theater operates.

The Community Engagement Coordinator isn’t doing essential work that makes all other marketing more effective. Your Facebook ads perform better because you have brand recognition in the community. Your email open rates improve because people feel personally connected. Your word-of-mouth referrals increase because community members are invested in your success.

This is when the compounding really accelerates.

What This Requires From Board Members (The Uncomfortable Part)

This phased approach only works if board members are willing to:

1. Accept that audience development is a multi-year investment, not a quarterly expense.

If someone on your board wants to see ticket revenue impact from community work within 6 months, this won’t work. Full stop. You need board members who understand the difference between customer acquisition tactics and relationship infrastructure building.

2. Measure different metrics than traditional marketing.

You’re measuring community touchpoints, partnership depth, volunteer engagement, new neighborhoods reached, and word-of-mouth growth. These predict sustainable revenue better than quarterly ticket sales.

If your board only looks at immediate ticket revenue per dollar spent, you’ll kill community engagement before it has time to work.

3. Protect the work from “flavor of the month” syndrome.

Board turnover and economic pressure make community work vulnerable, especially when new members didn’t approve the original investment. Cutting a 3-year pilot at 18 months because results aren’t dramatic enough wastes everything you’ve built. Community engagement requires commitment to see it through.

4. Be willing to admit when current strategies aren’t working.

If your theater has been running the same paid advertising playbook for five years with declining returns, but board members resist changing course because “that’s what we know,” community engagement won’t get the support it needs.

5. Understand that this requires adequate staffing.

You cannot add community engagement to someone’s existing full-time marketing role and expect it to work long-term. Portland Center Stage had grant funding and still had to reduce programming in Year 2 because staff was exhausted. If your board wants community engagement but won’t fund the capacity to do it sustainably, you’re setting up your staff to burn out.

The Questions to Ask Before You Take the Theater Marketing Job

If you’re interviewing for a Director of Marketing role at a theater and you want to implement community engagement, you need to evaluate whether the organizational culture will actually support this work.

Ask these questions:

To the Managing Director:

“Walk me through how success is typically measured for marketing initiatives. What metrics matter most to the board?”

Listen for whether they talk exclusively about quarterly ticket revenue or if they mention long-term audience value, retention, and relationship building.

“Tell me about a time when the theater invested in something that didn’t show immediate returns but paid off over time.”

This tells you if the organization has experience with long-term strategic thinking or if everything is judged on short-term results.

“How much autonomy would I have to reallocate marketing budget toward community engagement if I could make the case that it would build more sustainable audiences?”

This reveals whether you’ll have the strategic authority to actually implement new approaches or if you’ll be executing someone else’s predetermined plan.

To Board Members (if you get to meet them):

“What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the theater in the next 3-5 years?”

If they talk about immediate cash flow and next season’s ticket sales, that’s different than talking about changing demographics, audience aging, or need for deeper community roots.

“How does the board typically respond when a strategy takes longer than expected to show results?”

This tells you about their patience for initiatives that require time to mature.

To Current Staff:

“Tell me about community engagement initiatives the theater has tried. What worked? What didn’t?”

This reveals whether community work has been tried and abandoned (suggesting the board won’t support it long-term) or if it’s new territory (suggesting you’ll need to build the case from scratch).

“How would you describe the board’s relationship with risk and experimentation?”

Conservative boards might approve a tiny pilot but will never scale it. Boards comfortable with calculated risk are more likely to commit to a multi-year approach.

Red Flags That Community Engagement Will Fail Here

Some organizational cultures will sabotage community engagement no matter how good your strategy is. Watch for these red flags:

The board talks about “serving the community” but programming reflects donor preferences rather than actual community needs.

This means community is a marketing story, not a genuine value.

Staff turnover is high, especially in marketing and development roles.

This suggests burnout from unrealistic expectations or lack of support for strategic work.

The theater’s last three marketing directors lasted less than two years each.

Someone keeps getting hired to “fix” marketing through immediate results, burning out, and leaving. You’ll be next.

Board meetings focus almost exclusively on budget shortfalls and immediate revenue needs.

This creates a culture of constant crisis where only short-term tactics get approved.

The Managing Director talks about community engagement but hasn’t fought for it in budget discussions.

If the MD isn’t willing to advocate for multi-year investment, the board never will.

Community partnerships exist but are purely transactional (logo exchanges and email blasts).

This indicates the theater doesn’t actually know how to build genuine relationships.

Marketing is seen as a support function rather than a strategic driver.

If you’ll be reporting to someone who sees marketing as “promoting what artistic decides,” you won’t have the authority to build community-integrated programming.

What Success Actually Requires (Beyond Strategy)

I’ve laid out the financial model, the phased approach, and the board dynamics. But let me be brutally honest about what this actually requires to work:

You need a Managing Director who believes in this approach and will protect it politically.

When board pressure comes, the MD needs to hold the line on multi-year commitment. If your MD caves to “show me results by next quarter” pressure, community engagement dies.

You need at least one board champion who will defend community work in budget discussions.

This is someone with enough credibility and tenure on the board that when they say “we need to give this more time,” people listen.

You need capacity that doesn’t depend on one person doing two full-time jobs.

Either you get a Community Engagement Coordinator or you have realistic limits on what community work you can do while also running traditional marketing. Burning yourself out proves nothing except that the workload was unsustainable.

You need to be comfortable having hard conversations about measurement and timelines.

When board members ask “how many tickets did this sell?” you need the confidence to say “that’s not how we’re measuring success in Year 1, and here’s why” without apologizing for it.

You need patience for the compounding effect.

The first six months will feel slow. You’ll be building relationships that haven’t converted to anything measurable yet. You’ll wonder if you’re wasting time. This is the valley where most initiatives die because people lose faith before the results materialize.

But if you keep showing up, keep building authentic relationships, keep training your team in genuine conversation, keep measuring the right things, somewhere around month 9 or 10, you’ll start seeing it work.

Someone will buy tickets and mention they met you at a community festival six months ago. A local business will reach out about sponsorship because they’ve been watching your theater show up for the community. A volunteer will bring five friends to a show because they’re genuinely excited about what you’re building.

That’s when you know it’s working. And that’s when the compounding accelerates. And I hope you as an individual find fulfillment and purpose in this method of marketing.

The Bottom Line

Give yourself grace because getting board buy-in for community engagement isn’t about having the perfect pitch. It’s about finding boards who are ready to invest in long-term sustainability rather than short-term survival tactics. As marketing and communications people, it is our job to hold the integrity of what our organization is communicating, and making sure it aligns with the mission. 

There is a part of me that grieves that some boards will never approve this approach. They’re too focused on quarterly results, too risk-averse, too invested in traditional marketing models. That’s okay because some of our theaters are in dire financial circumstances due to cut funding and tighter wallets. Do I think those theaters will survive without this pivot? Probably not in the long term. But those aren’t the theaters you’re meant to occupy.

Your job is to find theaters where:

• Leadership actually wants to build sustainable community relationships
• Boards understand that audience development takes years, not months
• The culture supports strategic thinking alongside financial responsibility
• Staff capacity gets adequate support rather than stretched impossibly thin

When you find that theater, present the phased model with the math and partnership stories that demonstrate you understand the financial pressure while making the case that community investment creates more valuable audiences than paid advertising ever will.

And if they’re not ready to commit to at least three years of this work, be honest about that limitation. Don’t pretend you can build sustainable community relationships in 12 months to get hired. That sets everyone up for failure.

Heading into 2026, I deeply believe the theaters that survive the next decade won’t be the ones with the biggest marketing budgets or the flashiest advertising campaigns.

They’ll be the ones that built genuine community relationships before the next crisis hit. They’ll be the ones that invested in the community and infrastructures that makes audiences feel personally connected to their mission and success.

This work takes time. It takes commitment. It takes board members willing to measure what actually matters rather than just what’s easy to measure.

But it’s the only thing that actually lasts.

Hiring for a theater marketing or community engagement role? I bring nonprofit marketing experience, community relationship-building expertise, and strategic thinking about sustainable audience development. Connect on LinkedIn or email me at  zachary.bernauer@gmail.com to discuss how I can help your theater.