Posts Tagged ‘georgia theater’

Georgia Theater Accepting Donations for Renovation — Cool or Uncool?

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One of the AJC’s new blogs, Inside Access, recently featured news about the Georgia Theatre, which was ravaged by a fire in June.

(Photo courtesy of neuftoes)

The theater, located in Athens, is now accepting donations through the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation to help offset construction costs.  If the commenters are to be believed (and given the history of commenters at the AJC, this is at best hazardous), this partnership has gotten some major panties in a bunch.

Recently, there have been a few for-profit businesses (Paste, Wordsmiths (RIP)) that have asked for donations to keep themselves alive.  The mixing of profit with non-profit tactics really ticked some people off.

Yet we, as a non-profit, ask for donations to stay alive all the time.  Really, it’s pretty much all we do.  And to date, not one person has yelped, “Well, I NEVER!” in response.

Now, I know there are inherent differences (like tax-exemption).  But how severe are those differences from the viewpoint of the Average Joe who’s happy to see both the Wren’s Nest and the Georgia Theatre in his neighborhood?  Should he not financially support the theater because it’s for-profit, even though the end result is essentially the same for him?

I know the simple logic is “Well derr, Amelia — you support the theater by giving them money to see shows they put on.  Idiot.”  But that’s hard to do when the theater is all “non-functional” and “charred.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I have donated my hard-earned pennies to for-profits, but not all that asked.  And with a lot more deliberation than when I’ve donated to non-profits.

What do y’all think?  Would you donate to the Georgia Theatre?