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5 School Theater Revenue Sources Beyond Ticket Sales

Funding school theater is always a challenge. While a few schools offer an annual budget for school productions, most drama clubs are left with whatever revenue they take in from the previous production. Ticket pricing is a challenge: you want to make the show cheap enough to attract an audience but not so cheap that it seems like a waste of time (students don't have much faith in the quality of a $1 show.)

Once you get the ticket price down, there are other revenue streams to consider. Here are a few easy options for adding a couple hundred extra dollars to your next production budget.

Concessions

Concessions don't have to be a daunting task. If you have absolutely no budget to start with, you can ask parents to bring cupcakes and cookies from home. Parents who don't have time to bake can offer to grab a case of soda and a bag of ice. All you need is a table, a cooler, and a cash box-- oh, and a volunteer parent to run the table.

Do you have a little padding in your budget? Grab the school Costco or Sam's Club card and make a Saturday trip to stock up. Keep it simple by sticking to items you can price for a dollar. Bottled water and bags of peanuts have some of the highest profit margins. Cans of soda and sour straws are always a big hit with teens.

Pins and Stickers

Got a concessions booth? Try adding souvenirs. T-shirts are a real risk because of cost and stocking sizes, so stick to the small stuff. You can easily convince people to spend an additional dollar with their snack to buy a nice pinback button. 

Start small with 25 pins (around 40-50¢ a piece if you get them from a good supplier) and use an attractive design. AT this size in price, you recoup your expense if you sell only half of them, and the profit margin goes up the more you can sell.

They make great show souvenirs and you'll sell a lot of them to the kids in the show.



Donation Tree

Set up a donation tree by decorating a small Christmas tree or cutting a construction paper tree out and taping it to the wall. Hang tags with item requests on the tree for supporters to take. Be sure to include gift card requests for the places you usually spend money at (ours includes Home Depot, Hobby Lobby, and Amazon.com)

Below the tree in a place that your ticket-takers can supervise, leave a donation box.

Show Shirts

For every show, I design an attractive show shirt that my kids will be proud to wear. I allow them to order multiples for friends and family, and I make sure to keep the costs down so that I can make a little profit on each one. The show shirts for my production of Romeo and Juliet brought in a couple hundred dollars, which allowed us to purchase a few props we needed.



Program Advertising

If you're taking the time to print a playbill, then you're already spending money. Why not turn that expense into a profit opportunity? Figure out a good pricing structure for full page (5.5x8.5), half page, and quarter page ads and send your kids out to pound pavement and ask for sponsorships. Local businesses get involved in your program and you make a little extra money. Just be clear whether you're using black and white or full-color printing.

For our big shows we print the cover full-color (with ads on the back and inside the cover) and make the inside pages black and white, but with enough sponsorships you could do the whole program in glossy color.

Want an option for those who don't have graphics but want to help? Sell tweet-sized ads for $25.

How do you fund shows?

What creative ways are you bringing extra revenue into your school program? Leave a comment below. Thanks!
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