{"id":7955,"date":"2024-12-04T18:35:34","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T22:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/?p=7955"},"modified":"2024-12-04T18:35:34","modified_gmt":"2024-12-04T22:35:34","slug":"astor-theatre-looks-long-term-with-new-endowment-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/2024\/12\/04\/astor-theatre-looks-long-term-with-new-endowment-fund\/","title":{"rendered":"Astor Theatre looks long term with new endowment fund"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lynn Cochrane is the vice-chair of the Astor Theatre Society. (Rick Conrad)<\/p><\/div>\n

Liverpool’s historic Astor Theatre is launching a new endowment fund to help put it on firmer financial footing.<\/span><\/p>\n

About 60 supporters of the Astor turned out at the theatre on Tuesday evening for the announcement.<\/p>\n

The Astor Theatre Endowment Fund is separate from the theatre\u2019s annual fundraising campaign. It\u2019s a longer-term investment fund that would accept larger legacy donations from corporations or people\u2019s estates.<\/span><\/p>\n

Once the fund is built up to a certain point, the Astor could then use interest from the investments to cover yearly operational expenses and invest in new programs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outgoing Astor Theatre Society board chair John Simmonds said ticket sales from events account for about 40 per cent of revenues. Grants and fundraising are the theatre’s main sources of revenue.<\/p>\n

Lynn Cochrane, vice-chair of the Astor Theatre Society, spearheaded the effort to set up the fund.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been on the board for a couple of years now and every year we come up with a bit of a shortfall,” she said in an interview, “and I started looking at ways of helping the theatre counteract that shortfall, talked to a number of other theatres and they have endowment funds or investment funds that donors can donate to and their money lives on for yers and the returns come to the theatre to cover those shortfalls every year.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Cochrane and Simmonds said that they hope that in a few years, the principal in the fund will grow to about $1 million. At that point, the Astor can decide whether to use the annual interest earned or reinvest it and continue to grow the fund.<\/p>\n

It will be managed by Mark Sapp at Scotia McLeod in Bridgewater.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jean Robinson-Dexter, former interim executive director of the theatre, said the endowment fund is a great step toward securing the Astor\u2019s future.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s lots of work to do in the whole fund development area for the organization. So I think this is a great launch for the sustainability and long-term care of the organization.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Tom Raddall, whose family are longtime supporters of the Astor, said he believes the community will support it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know the community appreciates this theatre. I know our family does. I mean, my grandmother played the piano in the silent movies in this theatre. There\u2019s a connection for probably for most of the people that have been born and brought up here and a connection for the people who have moved here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of people including myself will give this a hard look when we go home tonight and talk about our future plans.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Email: rickconradqccr@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Listen to the audio version of this story below<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/astorannouncementdec424.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liverpool’s historic Astor Theatre is launching a new endowment fund to help put it on firmer financial footing. About 60 supporters of the Astor turned out at the theatre on Tuesday evening for the announcement. The Astor Theatre Endowment Fund is separate from the theatre\u2019s annual fundraising campaign. It\u2019s a longer-term investment fund that would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,5],"tags":[1160,38,1421,2672,185,275,41,39,2673,1161,1789],"class_list":["post-7955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-news","category-news-posts","tag-arts","tag-astor-theatre","tag-astor-theatre-society","tag-endowment-fund","tag-fundraising","tag-jean-robinson-dexter","tag-john-simmonds","tag-liverpool","tag-scotia-mcleod","tag-theatre","tag-tom-raddall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7958,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7955\/revisions\/7958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qccrfm.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}