MOSSO’s point-by-point rebuttal to the SSO Board Management Committee’s late-November 2021 open letter to the community entitled “Envisioning a Sustainable Future”

MOSSO Responses in Red

Dear Friend of the SSO,

We are writing to you, a valued supporter and stakeholder of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, with an update on the status of a 2021-22 season and beyond. Please know that the entire SSO Board, except its one musician union member who has a different point of view, is united in its approach for achieving a sustainable future for the SSO.

Just what IS this united approach to achieve a sustainable future for the SSO which has been embraced by all but the musician member of the Board? And why aren't those two additional board members signatories to this letter? For the record: That lone musician board member has for years made specific recommendations to both sustain and grow the SSO, all of which have been ignored. This disregard is possible because the six Board Management Committee (BMC) members have arrogated to themselves majority control by refusing to add new members. They have rewritten the bylaws, effectively voting to eliminate term limits for themselves in practice. As long as total board membership remains at nine, rather than the bylaw-mandated fifteen, the BMC will maintain its iron grip on the SSO.   

The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the SSO and has had a profound impact on live performance venues and programming. We are working to re-emerge in a way that is safe and forward looking. The SSO Board is exploring all options to assure the future of live professional symphonic music in the Valley.

Every other orchestra in the Northeast — the whole country, in fact — has already re-emerged. Symphony Hall has been open for business since September, hosting several events, including the highly successful concert MOSSO produced there on 10/15. We respectfully suggest that eliminating virtually the entire organizational staff of the SSO is unlikely to be a viable strategy for assuring the future of live professional music in the Valley. Could the SSO Board please share with the public the options it is exploring to accomplish the crucial goal of a vibrant future for the SSO? 

While we work toward a sustainable future for the SSO, we have been engaged in a negotiation with the musicians’ union on a new contract. The core of the SSO’s dispute with the union is whether the SSO should have the operational flexibility to permit its long-term survival. Characterizations of our negotiations have become public and contentious through communications by representatives of the musicians. The SSO has not, and will not, veer from our focus on the very real financial challenges SSO faces and has chosen not to negotiate in the public or press. We continue to work diligently for a fair settlement that takes into account all constituencies and the long-range health of the important institution we represent.

The BMC's decision to send this letter to SSO supporters and run it as a full-page ad in both the Republican and BusinessWest is most certainly negotiating in public and in the press. So was delivering a ​contract settlement ultimatum through the Boston Globe back on June 10 last year. 

We believe that what BMC members mean by “operational flexibility” is the continuation of the decades-long failed strategy of attempting to cut their way to success. Doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting different results is — in addition to being the definition of insanity (as a wise man, possibly Albert Einstein, once said) — the very opposite of “flexibility." SSO timpanist and alternate musician board member Martin Kluger has made a number of carefully researched presentations to the board to demonstrate creative new ways to deal with the SSO's financial challenges, all of which have been ignored. Why? Simply because they raised the possibility of doing things differently? Martin has also provided data from peer orchestras to show how the Board's mis-allotment of fiscal resources has contributed directly to the SSO's financial problems.

Recently, the musicians formed a competing symphonic organization, known as Musicians of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Inc. (MOSSO). MOSSO is directly affiliated with the musicians’ union and its public pronouncements and fundraising activities have resulted in the splintering of our community and inviting symphony lovers to take sides. This is harmful to all parties, not the least of which is the Symphony and its patrons.

How can MOSSO be in competition with the SSO, an organization presently missing in action, and not coincidentally, without an organizational staff? MOSSO is simply filling the resulting musical void by bringing live classical music performances to Springfield and the Valley. As the BMC is well aware, fundraising is a prerequisite for producing and presenting concerts, and planning concerts is a prerequisite for fundraising.

It is regrettable that representatives of the musicians’ union and MOSSO are spending time and resources denigrating and attacking SSO Board members and making inflammatory comments. Demeaning the SSO Board and leadership with a steady stream of false and misleading representations is more than an unfortunate negotiating tactic. It also diminishes the chance of achieving the shared goal of providing live professional symphonic music to the region.

We are at a loss to find any examples of behavior on our part that would give any credence to the BMC's assertions above. BMC members provide no examples of “false” or “misleading representations,” despite claiming that MOSSO has produced “a steady stream” of such statements.

All parties need to work together productively to assure that there is a sustainable future for the organization we love.

No doubt. But these unobjectionable words are completely dissonant with the BMC's disdainful approach to contract negotiations with the SSO Musicians' Committee. The most recent talks have dragged on for two years, during which two different SSO teams, at the behest of the BMC, have failed to make serious efforts to work towards a middle ground acceptable to both parties. This fruitless process has been a waste of valuable time for all those directly involved who in good faith volunteered their time. Moreover, the members of the BMC have for many years rebuffed efforts by the Musicians' Committee to work constructively with them, snubbing our members' combined hundreds of years of professional experience in many different facets of the music business.

There are very real challenges and financial constraints facing the SSO that no amount of public posturing by the union and its supporters can obscure. 

MOSSO (Musicians of the SSO), not the union and its supporters, acknowledges the challenges facing the SSO. But we contend that the root cause of these challenges and constraints has been BMC members' many years of restrictive, blinkered governance of the orchestra. We see no concrete solutions offered in this open letter. We do know that myriad constructive solutions were proposed early this year at the conclusion of last fall's study of the SSO by Rainmaker, a consulting firm specializing in turning around nonprofit organizations. The study was a collaboration of dozens of SSO stakeholders, including patrons, audience members, board members, staff and musicians. It was designed to chart a vibrant path forward for the SSO, but Rainmaker's recommendations have been shelved by the BMC, whose members have instead chosen to in effect shut down the organization.  

The SSO’s challenges are clear:

Each year, the SSO budgets for the use of a prudent distribution from its endowment (the “draw") to fund its operations. However, the SSO has consistently been suffering ever increasing operational losses over time, resulting in large additional withdrawals from its endowment to fund the losses. For example, in the 2018-19 season prior to COVID, the SSO had to withdraw $932,000 from the endowment, more than $600,000 in excess of the planned draw to cover expenses.

A total of $3.1 million, including the budgeted annual draw from the endowment and additional withdrawals, has been utilized from the SSO endowment to cover operational losses during just the four seasons from 2016-17 through 2019-20.

The SSO Endowment has both restricted and unrestricted funds. Both are utilized for the annual draw. Principal from unrestricted funds can be spent to underwrite operational losses. However, principal from restricted funds cannot be used to underwrite losses. As a result, unrestricted funds as a portion of the whole endowment have been dwindling. Ten years ago, in 2011, unrestricted endowment funds available to underwrite losses were approximately 61% of the endowment. By 2020, unrestricted funds represented only 33% of the endowment. At the rate of operational losses the SSO has been incurring, the unrestricted funds will be exhausted in the next few years.

It is telling that the BMC only focuses above on the SSO endowment as a means of funding operational expenses. The reason, apparently, is that BMC members hadn’t earlier engaged seriously enough in fundraising as a means of covering those costs. Consequently, they have had to repeatedly draw down the principal of the endowment, because they hadn’t raised sufficient funds to be used in conjunction with the endowment’s investment returns. This strategy runs counter to the very purpose of an endowment, and as the BMC notes, is without question unsustainable.

To be clear: The SSO has a revenue problem, not an expenditure problem.The BMC has for several years been overly reliant on the SSO endowment to fund operating expenses because its members have long embraced a penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to governing the orchestra. The many hundreds of thousands of dollars in overdraws since 2016 cited above could well have been avoided had BMC members been willing to spend just tens of thousands of dollars a few years earlier to attract and hire a strong executive director at market rate. Such a leader, if granted autonomy, would have assembled an able supporting team to raise money, market the SSO in creative ways, and expand its audience and patron base. 

However, notwithstanding BMC members’ questionable governing decisions, there is good news:

SSO finances are not in trouble. The BMC narrative that principal withdrawals from the unrestricted endowment threaten the existence of the organization is false. Actually, during the pandemic the SSO has benefited financially from not producing concerts, the furloughing of some and eventual departure of almost all of its managerial staff, the dismissal of its music director, and reaping a windfall through two major federal grants (the forgiven Paycheck Protection Protection loan for $186,960 and the Shuttered Venue Operators grant worth $428,725). In fact, the SSO enjoyed a 2020 budgetary surplus of more than $200,000. But we should also note that the SSO lost out on two recent grants, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) May, 2021 award of grants totaling $2,276,500 to 103 orchestras through its Grants for Arts Projects, and the League of American Orchestras July, 2019, grants of $80,000 - $150,000 each to nineteen U.S. orchestras to support innovation and organizational learning. We are compelled to ask: Why hasn’t the SSO board ever invested in a full-time — or even a part-time — grant writer, as virtually every comparable arts non-profit does? 

The SSO’s use of endowment funds totaling $3.1 million during the four seasons 2016-17 through 2019-20 requires further explanation, because the budgeted draw on investment returns accounts for nearly half of this amount. In reality, losses during these four seasons equaled just $1.6 million (defined as total revenue minus total expenses on IRS 990 forms filed in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 covering June of the previous year thru May of the year listed).

Revenue shortfalls are the direct result of inconsistent fundraising. Nearly $2.4 million was raised in contributions and grants over the four seasons 2016-2017 thru 2019 -2020. However, SSO fundraising has been inconsistent: From a high of nearly $900,000 in May 2017, development revenue drifted downward to roughly $430,000 in May 2018 and $280,000 in May 2019, years when the SSO had no development director. When the SSO promoted Susan Beaudry from development director to executive director in late 2017, the BMC opted to save money by not filling her vacant position, resulting in there being no development director to raise money for almost two years. Financially, this proved a disastrous decision, considering that by May 2020 fundraising improved to about $750,000 after John Anz was finally brought onboard as the new development director in October 2019. In comparing the pair of two-year periods with and without a full-time development director in the office, the difference in contributions is dramatic: $923,778. So: The SSO raised over $450,000 more per year while employing a development director. Importantly, that amount exceeds the average amount of the annual overdraw on the endowment which the BMC is concerned about. So, it is clear that the unsustainable overdraw on the endowment is the direct result of a lack of consistent investment in professional fundraising staff, NOT the result of producing too many concerts with too many musicians. 

Data from the League of American Orchestras supports the conclusion that withdrawals of principal from the endowment were due to lagging SSO fundraising. Their 2017 study comparing fourteen peer orchestras with budgets similar in size to the SSO’s showed the SSO was the organization with the lowest percentage of costs met from contributions and the highest percentage of costs met by drawing down of endowment assets. Furthermore, the SSO spends 18% less on performance costs than its average peer orchestra, and its season is already 40% smaller. Historically, cutting the number of SSO performances in a season has failed to prevent operational losses, undermines raising funds from businesses, individuals and grants, and cripples the very mission of the SSO as a vibrant cultural resource for the community.

The SSO still has a large endowment. The Open Letter warns, due to “large additional withdrawals from its endowment…unrestricted funds as a portion of the whole endowment have been dwindling.” That statement overlooks the important point that the total value of the SSO endowment now exceeds by far the $6.5 million reported in the most recent publicly filed IRS 990 form, covering through May 31, 2020. Although its present value has not been publicly shared, the total endowment absolutely exceeds its 5-year rolling average of $7.3 million. The SSO endowment appreciates along with the US stock market, which as measured by the S&P 500 index, grew nearly 50% during the months of SSO dormancy from May, 2020 to December, 2021, so we know its present value certainly exceeds 8 million dollars.

Concert attendance has been steadily declining for many years. In the year just preceding COVID, audiences for classical concerts filled far fewer than half of the seats in Symphony Hall.

Traditional audiences for classical symphony concerts have been aging and shrinking for quite a while. So why has the SSO not addressed this demographic shift? 

Case in point: Educational outreach and engagement are essential tools in cultivating new audience members. Decades ago, the SSO used to send many chamber groups representing the various instrumental families of the orchestra into the Springfield schools. Sadly, these programs have dwindled down to practically nothing over the years — a serious loss for generations of Springfield students, many of whom might have become SSO concert goers.

But on a positive note: A few years ago, a concert collaboration featuring SSO and SSYO musicians side-by-side graced the stage of Symphony Hall. This was a wonderful event — more opportunities of this type are needed for student musicians. The annual SSO youth concerts at Symphony Hall aren’t nearly enough.

Another problem: Why does SSO marketing still focus on traditional print media, when cultivating new audiences can more effectively be accomplished through social media? Countless orchestras across the country, including peer orchestras in the northeast, are all facing the same challenges as the SSO. But their leaders have been proactive — evolving with the times, marketing their organizations in creative ways, attracting new audiences. These orchestras have sprung back to life with full summer and fall concert offerings. The SSO has remained on the sidelines.

Fundraising and sponsorships well in excess of historical levels would be required to sustain operations at pre-COVID levels of concert offerings. While the SSO has been making every effort to raise additional funding, and will continue to do so, success, if it comes, will take time during which the SSO cannot afford to operate at pre-COVID loss levels. Our ability to raise funds from donors is likely to be significantly impacted by the efforts of MOSSO and the musicians’ union.

The words “success, if it comes, will take time” — issuing from the putative leaders of the SSO — certainly do not inspire confidence. Particularly given that the BMC has rejected the negotiation concept of a gradual contractual restoration to the status quo of ten SSO concerts over the course of three or four seasons. Had BMC members truly wanted to bring classical music performances to Springfield and the Valley this season, they wouldn’t be in fear of losing donations to MOSSO, an organization that IS presently bringing live, in-person performances to the region. And BMC members have most certainly NOT "been making every effort to raise additional funding." 

Here are the facts: In April, a successful development director was removed from his job to become interim (and now already former) executive director. Fundraising operations have been shut down for more than six months, and back in June BMC members publicly expressed questions about the "viability" of the SSO going forward, much as they did in the bullet point above. By the end of May, the BMC had let go of the music director, has since allowed practically the entire organizational staff to disappear, and recently settled a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) complaint by agreeing to pay SSO musicians for eight 2021-2022 concerts that will not be produced. These are certainly not encouraging signals to send to potential benefactors of the SSO. And now that the revolving door through which key SSO organizational staff have passed for several years (e.g., five departed executive directors since the end of 2012) has become an exit door, the two 2022 spring concerts that the SSO committed to in the NLRB settlement will actually be more a test of the viability of the BMC than of Springfield and Pioneer Valley audiences.

All of these factors make it critical for the SSO, if it is to survive, to have the flexibility to determine the number of live symphonic concerts that it should hold. To sustain itself for future generations, performances must attract sufficient audiences and sponsors and the organization must attract sufficient annual donations to achieve a balanced operational cost and funding structure.

The most recent seasons of ten SSO concerts already represent a decades-long attrition of symphony performances for Springfield and the Valley. Reductions over the years in both numbers of concerts presented and numbers of musicians on stage have never been restored in subsequent seasons. There is no reason to believe that this long-standing pattern will change now if the “flexibility" that the BMC seeks is granted. Further downsizing of SSO concert seasons will end up degrading the artistic product, make it ever more difficult to raise money, and abet a march to irrelevance that present board leadership seems unwilling or unable to counter.

Given factors such as the uncertainties generated by COVID, the SSO had offered the musicians’ union the opportunity to play concerts this season beginning with a Holiday Pops concert and a full season of programs, including at least six concerts for next season at an increased salary rate. The Union rejected this proposal. While negotiations have been stalled, there may still be time to plan for some number of spring concerts.

As noted earlier, there will be just two 2021-2022 concerts in the spring, according to the terms of the NLRB settlement recently imposed on the SSO. Contract talks have stalled because the BMC never responded to the musicians' latest proposal in the early fall. 

 The BMC’s misleading assertions about what terms the SSO had offered demand explanation and context. Early this year, a multi-year contract was seemingly under serious discussion between the SSO negotiating team and the Musicians' Committee, a deal which (as noted above) would have enabled the SSO to gradually return to the status quo of ten concerts by the final season. But by the early spring, the entire SSO negotiating team (executive director plus two board members) disappeared from the organization, and the multi-year deal under discussion disappeared with them. The new SSO team (acting at the behest of the BMC like the prior team) had no board representation, consisting of just the brand-new interim (and now former) executive director and SSO's legal counsel. Throughout the spring and summer, the BMC insisted on a one-year deal: a half-season of five concerts for 2021-2022. By the time BMC members added to their proposal a six-concert 2022-2023 season — NOT a full season of ten concerts — they had already removed the 2021 Holiday Pops concert from the first year of their proposal. Why did they pull away a concert that is traditionally the biggest money-maker of the season, after being urged by the Musicians' Committee to schedule the five-concert 2021-2022 season and continue contract talks to address the 2022-2023 season? The simple math shows that a total of ten concerts were offered over two seasons: a 50% reduction in work. A modest raise in per-service pay rate, particularly in these inflationary times, has no meaning in that context.

 All of us on the SSO Board volunteered to serve because of our love of live professional symphonic music. We will continue to work toward creating a future in the region for symphonic music that we can all applaud and sustain.

Management Committee
Board of Directors, Springfield Symphony Orchestra

The Management Committee is six members of a current board of nine members, well short of the bylaw-mandated number of fifteen members. So the BMC represents just 40% of what a full, truly functional SSO board should be. Without an infusion of fresh blood — new members with expertise in the arts and from the diverse Springfield community generally — there will be no possibility of constructive dialogue about creative, forward-looking approaches to achieving the BMC's stated goal of a healthy, vibrant future for the SSO.