Hello! Our organization distributes hundreds if not thousands of comp ticket coupons to various community organizations each year through our community ticket program.
Right now, we send out paper coupons for organizations to distribute, which get redeemed at the box office for actual tickets once the individual is sure they are coming. That process is done using email requests and paper mail, using Microsoft Access to keep track of everything up until the coupons get redeemed. It requires a great deal of manual effort on the part of the program's administrator, as well as on the part of our community partners.
I'd like to make this process easier, fairer, and more efficient for everyone involved so that we can help more people take advantage of this program, but I've struggled to find much information on how best to do this.
I'd love to hear how other organizations administer similar programs, either over text here or by setting up a quick call if you're willing! I'm also going to the Tessitura conference for the first time this year, and would be happy to talk then too. Thank you!
-Elise Bargman
Database Specialist
Overture Center for the Arts
Here is a rough timeline of our current coupon process:
• Four to six weeks prior to performances, Overture emails notices announcing available coupons.
• Organizations request coupons by a designated deadline (usually one week later) via email request
• Our program administrator manually adds the requests into Access, allocates coupons as fairly as possible, and distributes them via regular mail to partnering organizations, who physically distribute them to their constituents.
• The coupons must be exchanged for actual tickets at the Overture Ticket Office for a fee between $2 and $4 per ticket.
I'm particularly interested to hear about the following:
Elise-
We have an online form organizations can fill out for the ticket donation request. Sometimes they send us physical mailing too for request.
We enter the organization in Tessitura if they are not already an organization within the software. We make a new order for the "donation comp" as the donation for the show it's vetted for. Those are then mailed to the organization to use at their fundraising events.
When a patrons redeems the voucher we have two ways, call into our ticket office or go online to fill out a form. That form is sent to our inbox that is monitored during business hours for staff to fill.
We created a MOS for Vouchers and used an allocation hold "V" in section we want to allocate to use vouchers on. Then we send the tickets to the patron as a PAHT.
Most to the relationships with community organization have been ongoing.
If there were ticket donation letters or comp vouchers issued during the 19-20, 20-21 seasons, We ok'd them to be used in the 21-22 season. Those were either ok'd by myself or by my former predecessor's