Free Charity and Fundraiser Broadway and TV Show Tickets

How to get free TV and Broadway tickets for your charity or fundraiser

A popular fundraising idea for charities and other non-profit entities in the New York City area is to request free Broadway tickets from Broadway theaters or free TV Show tickets from TV studios and raffle them off to raise funds for their cause. Sometimes the tickets are used in a tricky tray, a silent auction, dutch auction or a raffle with the provider of the tickets getting an honorable mention in the the charity's program.

This charitable act is a noble gesture, but often one that bears little fruit for all the parties involved. The first problem is that there are far too many worthwhile charities, there are too many pleading letters and just too much competition between the charities for these lucrative, but elusive, freebies.

Getting TV Show Tickets For Your Fundraiser or Charity Event

On a TV show production, giving away audience tickets to a charity or fundraiser is difficult for many practical reasons. TV show productions in New York City are run on such low budgets that they don't even print tickets anymore, so there aren't even any physical tickets to offer. TV shows also do not like to hear that someone actually paid to get into a taping (even in a raffle), when it is a standard policy for TV show tapings to be free of charge.

In lieu of issuing tickets, the system that the audience coordinators at the TV shows use is to write someone's name down on a list and then check their ID at the door, so when it comes to a raffle, unless the person who requested the tickets has the same name as the winner, trouble will ensue.

TV shows also aren't very good at giving people concrete dates for when they can actually come to a taping because most of them do not affirm their booking until just a few weeks in advance. Furthermore, the TV shows in New York City have discovered that any tickets they give to charities have only a 20% chance of actually being used, which is much worse than a random giveaway chance, which is at 50%.

Since it is vital that the studio be filled up for each show -- so that the audience at home can see and hear an enthusiastic crowd -- that means the TV show producers are even less inclined to hand out charity tickets, that most likely won't be used and created al this extra work for them, after all - they are looking to do less administration not more. The pain-in-the butt IRS tax form 8283 is the nail in the coffin.

Problems Auctioning TV Show Tickets At Your Fundraiser Event

Many TV Shows do not take too kindly to fundraiser's auctioning off their tickets that they normally give away for free. Often fundraiser event organizers do not tell the TV shows what they are doing with the ticket and if pressed will say that they are giving them away in a free lottery.

Although there seems to be nothing wrong in auctioning these tickets at an event, but the TV production companies often have a bee-in-their-bonnet over this. Providing the tickets via a :tricky tray" may be more acceptable, but still it causes concern to the TV companies that their tickets are being sold and they just do not want that to happen.

Getting Free Broadway Show Tickets For Your Fundraiser or Charity

Broadway show producers find that giving away Broadway tickets away to charity can be ethically rewarding, but financially punishing. The logistics of giving away free tickets can be a tiresome burden, that a show may not want to endure. Broadway show productions are very expensive to run and giving away tickets only makes sense if the show has lots of excess ticket inventory (IE the show is not doing very well) or the show is a sell-out and wants to use some of its gains as tax write-offs. With the high cost of running a Broadway show, Broadway producers in the middle of this spectrum cannot easily afford to hand out free tickets to charities without it coming directly out of their pocket.

When producers do give out free tickets to charities, they tend to do it with a handful of charities they are already aligned with, most notably Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (BC/EFA). Producers just cannot accommodate the multitudes of other charities out there which are requesting donations for their causes. Frankly, given how few Broadway shows actually manage to attain that coveted smash-hit status, or even break-even - you could say that most Broadway shows are charity cases themselves, because most shows are actually money-losing ventures. The charity should be paying them.

Ironically, the Broadway shows that are huge hits (and that could actually afford to give away tickets for free) are sold out so far in advance that there are scarcely any tickets available to give away unless the producer holds back some extra tickets. Even to that extent the value of the tickets are so high, that the show investors often complain if the show gives away tickets to any other charity than the ones that Broadway is already aligned with. Broadway producers are besieged by requests every week from all kinds of charities asking for donations and after a while it becomes tedious dealing with all the requests, when they should be focused on running their show, not dealing with all the charity administration.

Different Methods Of Distribution At Your Event

Fundraiser's often use a Chinese auction, which is a combination of a raffle and an auction (Its also known as penny social, tricky tray or pick-a-prize). Research indicates that it does not matter which method is used to raffle the tickets as all of these methods usually elicit about the same monetary return for your charity. What does matter is the quality of the experience and this is what people will pay for.

Donation Tax Form 8283

Charities now ask all ticket donors to fill out the tax form Form 8283 (Rev. December 2014) from the Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service which covers "Noncash Charitable Contributions" Donors that were on the fence about giving free tickets are less likely to give them away when they know they have to fill out tax forms that get sent to the IRS. No good deed goes unpunished by the IRS

Recommendation for Fundraiser's and Charities

Part of the problem is a lack of creativity and thought on the part of the fundraiser's themselves. Seldom does a charity take the time to think through better solutions than just "Ask everyone we can for free stuff." and see what we get. We know it is a volunteer job, but the reality is that it is not a simple task that you have taken on and it will require some creative thinking. Perhaps the person who gave you this job is at fault in the first place, because they know exactly how hard it is, that is why they gave it to you.

A more successful approach that some charities have adopted is to actually buy some popular Broadway tickets well ahead of the date of their fundraiser and then auction them off at their event for a higher net amount. thus creating a profit for the charity. This has worked very well in the past with great orchestra seats to Book of Mormon or other "top 3" broadway shows like Wicked. Anything less than a top 3 show reduces the risk that anyone will buy or bid on the tickets.

Another example of the lack of value that a TV or Broadway show gets by giving out charity fundraiser tickets is that the tickets often go unused, which just annoys pretty much everyone on the production side. They did all this effort to give the tickets away and then the person who wins/buys the tickets fails to go. Also TV and Broadway producers do not really care if they are featured in the program that is circulated that night at the charity event, because, lets face it, no-one is reading that crappy program that you give out. If you want to appeal to TV and Broadway show producers you are going to have provide something of greater value than a line entry in a program that no-one reads, better to save the trees. We could make suggestions here to help with the task, but isn't that exactly what you are supposed to be doing? It seems that everyone who reads this article wants to get maximum results, with minimum effort. This is also known as being very lazy. Maybe you did not ask for this job, but the reality is that you are now doing it, so either do it well or no at all.

Most fundraiser's will find that in the long run coming up with creative ideas, using personal contacts (who will be much more likely to take your plea to heart than a random stranger receiving a "To Whom It May Concern" letter), and, in some cases, a willingness to spend money in order to make money, may yield better results than just blanketing the Broadway producers and TV shows of New York City with generic requests for free tickets for your charity. A thousand other lazy fundraisers have already done that and the producers did not respond positively to them either. The definition of insanity is repeating that same action and expecting the result to be different. It is time for fundraisers to think outside the box and change their tired approach.

I have to run off as the postman just arrived, now where's my shredder?