Actually, The Flea is emphatically not making millions of dollars. To be more blunt. they are not making any money, and operate, like most non-profits, at a break-even point, highly reliant]on their board to keep them operating. It can be tricky to judge a theater's profit from looking at just 990s, so you are not alone in concluding that the theater is making money, but they are not.
There are lots of things wrong with the way that The Flea is run, and it's high time that the community of artists who work there are treated with respect and properly compensated. But the myth that they are making money is patently absurd. As for the new facility, capital campaigns to invest in buildings are always separate from funds that pay for artistic operations (and generally much easier to raise funds for compared to paying artists), and a large portion of that $18 million came from only a few donors. The new building has proved an important income source for the theater, in terms of rentals, but that income is not the same thing as profit. |
