Saving a Theatre from Closing its Doors The President of The Edmonds Driftwood Players Dutch Heetbrink talks about how he revived the struggling Theatre company The Driftwood Players is an Edmonds WA based Community Theatre group. They recently announced that it pulled out of a long slump. But business hasn't always looked so promising. In 2008,  Dutch Heetbrink who had been a member since 2006, was asked to take over the Board Presidency to save the company from closing its doors permanently. Still president, Heetbrink spoke recently about how the company overcame some dark times. When did you first get involved with The Driftwood Players? I started at DWP as a actor in 2006. The company had been performing for over 50 years and it had been a very strong organization with a solid foundation. In 2008, when the stock market went bust, the first signs of trouble really became apparent. I was a fairly new member at that point. As a company, DWP had struggled for years, but as a volunteer organization, management had not picked up on all the warning signs. When the line of credit was revoked, the end of the road was in sight. I took over as President in 2008. When did things start going south? Looking back in the records, things started sliding downhill for DWP in about 2000 or 2001. It wasn't a single event that started that slide. Rather a combination of factors brought this on. Lack of appropriate management, a Board not strong enough, and a few employees who didn't have the job skills for the job that they had been hired for. I'm not really pointing fingers. As an outsider, charged with fixing what was wrong, I brought a complete new, fresh set of eyes to the table, and lots of business experience. As the outside, it was easier to see what had gone wrong. While in the trenches, sometimes these things are not always so clear. When I took the helm as President of the Board in March of 2008, we were in bad shape. We were two weeks away from payroll with nothing in the bank, and no credit. It was the end of the season and ahead lay two months of no revenue coming in. Why did you take on such a nearly impossible task? Part of it is my personality. I'm a country boy from The Netherlands. I'm not used to giving up. I'm probably a little hard-headed. DWP has such a rich heritage of fantastic volunteers, great productions, supportive and knowledgable administrative staff and loyal patrons. It deserved to be saved. I am an unusual manager because I spent a lot of time talking to everybody, in particular our patrons and volunteers. They will tell you how your organization is doing. I had heard all those wonderful things as a volunteer. I knew the role that Driftwood plays in the community is critical and I felt there truly is a wonderful organization here, but that it had suffered from leadership issues.  Why did you think you could help? I have an extensive background in business, both in small start-ups and large corporations. Because of my background, the problems were relatively easy for me to recognize. And I knew they could be fixed, after painful, but necessary changes in business practices, a process that would take hard work, lots of time and willingness to make permanent changes. Where do you start to salvage an operation that's in such deep trouble? Those were very dark days in the beginning. I had three challenges. The first day I arrived, there were several people in the organization who simply denied that anything was wrong. We had only a few employees, but I wasn't sure we could save them. The other challenge was time: We had to do something and we had to do it NOW! Longer term, we also needed to re-build an organization that could sustain itself going forward. My schedule was to start early in the morning and spend the first few hours speaking with employees, Board members, volunteers and season ticket holders, going through financial records and old e-mails to define where the ailment was and how to excise it. I would spend my afternoons, and often late into the evening creating a plan for the future. If we were going to have a future, we better know what it is going to be. I needed to figure out what would need to be done to keep patrons coming to the theater and buy tickets to see shows, while maintaining artistic integrity. A long-time knowledgeable and dedicated employee who is still with us, a CPA who is our Treasurer and a brilliantly smart and dedicated volunteer who was willing to take the job of Executive Producer for our Alternative Stages were my guiding lights and became the core of my "Revival Team". One of the things we knew early on we must accomplish was to keep the doors open and present a strong next season, even while privately we didn't know how to achieve that yet. Closing the doors, even for a short while, would be the kiss of death. My mantra then was: "Never make them see you sweat!" From 6 or 7 p.m. until late into the evening i would work. Then I'd sleep four or five hours, and get up and start all over again. I did that from March to May , 2000, until I knew what had happened and what needed to be done to fix it. When did you know that what you were doing was working? My first major win was getting some money in the bank through an early announcement of our next season. We encouraging patrons to buy early (with a bonus) and asked for donations. Also the Board gave me pretty much a free hand in doing what needed to be done. When I asked to lay employees off, they knew it was needed and agreed. It reduced the financial pressure greatly. How did you deal with what must have been a severe crisis in morale in-house? I made a decision early on to be completely honest. I couldn't share my doubts, but everybody seemed to trust me when I said I would be up front with them about everything. When I arrived, the season was just ending. All the money spent all the money there was and there was no line of credit, any backers, donors, angels or anybody else willing and/or able to financially tie us over.. One of the first things I did was downsize the company.  It was very difficult. I had several emergency meetings with the board and spoke to the effected employees several times. We then called everybody in the room and said, "Here's what we have to do. Some of you are leaving today, some are staying, but this is how we have do to it." How did you start rebuilding your patron relationships and loyalty? We made a lot of personal phone calls to patrons to renew their Season Tickets. Almost all of them were not actively aware that we were strugling, although almost all had noticed that the choices of shows had slipped. I worked hard on the Production side to create a strong season that would be well attended. What are some lessons you learned from this situation? Focus on your patrons. I made that decision early on, and it was absolutely right. After that, stick to your knitting. We tried to do some things that were a stretch for us, but not with great success. We've decided to stay within our historical competencies, since there's plenty for us to do in that space. Finally, be honest with your patrons, staff and volunteers and take care of them. We have had very little attrition. We got down some at our lowest point and we've built back up today. It's amazing what you can accomplish with a small, motivated, engaged team. Obviously it has been some time since the crisis at the company. What have you done since then? It's been tough, but right now our Season subcribers is the highest it has been in seven years. We went through changes in programming. Finding and training skilled volunteers is an on-going challenge, but we came out on top. Patrons and Volunteers are trusting us again. That's really the best part for me.