Messiah Choral Society Of Grand Junction
Donor Information
The purpose of the Messiah Choral Society is to produce an annual performance of Handel's Messiah on Easter Sunday afternoon. The performance is held at the historic Avalon Theater in Downtown Grand Junction. Each performance is offered as a musical gift to our community. Admission to the concert is free of charge. 4 elements are required to come together to make this gift a reality:
1. Donors who collectively give just over $10,000 to pay
for our director, rehearsal accompanist, orchestra, soloists, and venue.
2. Chorus Singers, we need at least 50 and enjoyed 76 last
Easter, who are volunteers that rehearse 2 hrs each Sunday afternoon
for 3 months prior to the concert plus many hours each of personal practice
with
rehearsal
CD's.
3. Professional Musicians to fill the paid roles of director,
accompanist, orchestra, and soloists.
4. An Audience
(the Avalon Theater has 1000 seats) to receive our gift and make the
concert
a
performance
rather
than
another
rehearsal.
Performance Description - Each performance utilizes a 19 piece orchestra, 4 solo voices, and 50 to 150 choral singers. To insure variety of voice color, soloists in any one year are not eligible to sing as soloists for the three years following that appearance. The program is a nearly complete performance of Messiah (we omit several numbers to keep the duration of the performance just over 2 hours but are committed to performing all the numbers within any 2 year period i.e. what we did not do last year we will do this year). The concert program handout contains the text of the work and recognizes all our donors and performers.
Financial Records - You can view our financial records at copy of our most recent 990 tax return.
The next performance will be on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010 at the Avalon Theater in downtown Grand Junction.
The budget for this performance is $10,250. Because our donors have different charitable giving objectives we offer four categories of donor support: Sustaining, Program, & Local Church Community, Patron.
Sustaining - $2,000 Sustaining donors are interested in supporting future performances of Messiah as well as the current year performance. One half of the contribution is designated for the Messiah Choral Society Fund (see below for details). Sustaining Donors are listed in the concert program every year subsequent to making their donation. Sustaining Donors will receive 4 reserved seats at the concert.
Program - These are donors focused on supporting the next Easter Sunday performance. All are recognized in our program and receive 2 reserved seats at the concert.
Silver Donors - $1,000 Donors - $500 Soloist Sponsorships - $250 Program Listing Donors - $100, $50, $25
Local Church Community- $100 Handel's Messiah presents a moving spiritual message emphasized by music of timeless beauty. For this reason churches in our community choose to support our concert as part of their community outreach program. To aoid distinguishing one church over another, we restrict the donated amount to $100. Donating churches are recognized in our program.
Patron - Patron donors are focused on insuring that an annual performance of Messiah remains a part of the classical music agenda in our community in perpetuity. To insure this objective is achieved, we are working to build an endowment, the Messiah Choral Society Fund, that will fund 50% of the annual concert cost from its earnings. We currently have $4,000 in the fund and are working to increase this amount to $100,000 over the next 5 years. If your objective is to insure Grand Junction continues to offer an annual performance of Messiah then we urge you to consider becoming a patron supporter. We accept donations in any amount but have established three giving levels:
Gold Patron - $20,000 Silver Patron - $10,000 Bronze Patron - $5,000
The Messiah Choral Society Fund is administered by the Western Colorado Community Foundation which can accept donated assets, estate giving, and help structure tax advantaged donation plans. Only the annual earnings of the fund are available for distribution to support the concert. Patron donors are recognized in the program for our performances in perpetuity.
What we are trying to do is neither unique nor impossible. About 200 cities in the United States host annual performances of Messiah. The Handel and Haydn Society in Boston performed the American premier of Messiah in 1818 and has performed it annually since 1854. The Messiah Choral Society of Central Florida, after which our organization is modeled, has performed Messiah annually for the last 35 years.
We hope you will join with us in making this annual musical gift a reality. Your financial support supplements 5500 hours of volunteer work that together make our concert possible.
Contributions should be made payable to:
Messiah Choral Society
2102 S. Broadway
Grand Junction, CO 81503
For more information contact: Ed Arnos 245-4914 messiah@bresnan.net