Somewhere over Northwestern’s rainbow, there still lies a pot of gold. Despite the shaky economy, this year’s 67th annual Dolphin Show, The Wizard of Oz, exceeded its fundraising goals through creative events and a restructured executive board. The Wizard of Oz runs Jan. 23 through Jan. 31.
Rather than relying solely on past fundraising methods, this year’s Dolphin Show business team invented ways to fund the $50,000 production. In addition to typical fundraisers such as a date auction and a phone-a-thon, a freshman cabaret was held during Family Weekend and most recently “A Night in Oz,” which featured five campus a cappella groups.
“A big part of this year’s fundraising has been all of the special events that we’ve thrown, which are a combination of fundraising and publicity,” said Dolphin Show Executive Producer of Business Kyly Zakheim. “They get the campus excited and it keeps the show on people’s minds.”
Zakheim, a Communication senior, never expected the fundraising shows to be so successful.
“The ticket sales from these events brought in a ton of revenue,” she said. “They were fairly inexpensive to put on so we made a ridiculous profit.”
Zachary Baer, executive producer and president of the Dolphin Show, has been involved in its production since his freshman year. This year’s fundraising got more people involved and also lessened the “burden” of raising around $30,000, the Communication junior said. The business team is responsible for making up the difference between the cost of putting on the production and the revenue from last year’s ticket sales.
Another critical change has been the addition of a third producer. Previously the artistic producer and business producer would split up tasks, but the addition of Baer’s position has taken some responsibilities away from Zakheim so she could concentrate on fundraising.
“The success of our fundraising has been because there can be a serious focus on that area,” Zakheim said.
For “A Night in Oz,” last week’s a cappella fundraising event, Zakheim asked Communication senior Sarah Grace Welbourn to be Dorothy.
“I had never done anything like that before,” said Welbourn, who was given free reign to host the evening.
Although the producers would not disclose the event’s profit, each special event garnered at least $550, and some much more, Zakheim said. The date auction made about $3,200, said Timothy McGovern, date auction co-host.
Despite the economic hardships facing the country, the Dolphin Show was relatively unaffected, Zakheim said. Although the business team was unable to acquire corporate sponsorships, Zakheim said that is “not atypical.”
And it hasn’t put a damper on the show. In fact, the producers exceeded their fundraising goal earlier than anticipated.
“(We) are in a wonderful place of budget allocation,” Zakheim said. “We can go back and see what needs more money now that we have it.”
Although the business team has extra funds, Baer said the surplus should be spent on this year’s show.
“The fact that we have exceeded our projected earnings is a direct result of hard work,” he said. “It’s only fair to give this year’s team the best production and experience we can possibly give them.”
