A little bit about money
Government funding
Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/pile-of-gold-round-coins-106152/
When the Bahamas government came through with its unprecedented grant of $340,000 to the Dundas, reactions ranged from exhilaration (on our part for sure) to criticism (why so much to one entity?). And the criticism was followed by complacency. Our fundraising activities began to falter just a little bit. You got the money from the government, people seemed to be thinking. What more do you want from us?
Well, first, let me address the idea of so much. When you look at it from one perspective, $340,000 is a princely sum. To go from zero support to support in the six figures is pretty staggering. And it’s welcome—especially in view of the urgency of our need.
But is it so (by which I want to read too) much?
Let’s do some math. The Bahamas got majority rule in 1967. The Dundas became dedicated to the performing arts in 1970, changing gears from producing domestics to producing creative artists before Independence. As Shakespeare in Paradise’s Year of Bahamian Theatre demonstrated, in every single decade since 1967, the Dundas did that, and pretty splendidly. Not a decade went by without some play of note being produced, some of them absolutely world-class, others surely significant on the national front.
That’s 55 years, my friends.
And in the 55 years, not once did the Dundas receive any major grant from the government of The Bahamas. No tax money was ever invested in what we did to help develop and sustain our mission.
And The Bahamas has no national theatre, no national school for the performing arts, no national anything performing arts related beyond Junkanoo and the place that was once the Shirley Street theatre and which is basically on the verge of condemnation today.
And this is despite The Legend of Sammie Swain, despite Dis We Tings, despite Laughing at Weself, despite Our Boys, despite You Can Lead a Horse to Water, despite Diary of Souls, despite Der Real Ting Musical!!—despite any of those touchstones that Bahamians can use to help remind them who they are in this world of myriad identities. Nothing invested in this development.
So divide $340,000 by 55 years, and then come back with the idea of “too much”. My math makes that about $6200 a year. Seems pretty reasonable to me for what the Dundas delivers. Way less that is spent on Junkanoo annually (about $5 million), on education generally (a quarter of a billion), on tourism (we don’t have a clue, do you?), or even on each national entity (about $50,000 p.a.). And this was to keep this self-funding community-based charity from having to close its doors forever.
We’re super happy the government recognized what we do and gave us a decent sum to get things back on track. But understand this: it is not enough to get done what needs to be done. Not at all.
For people who might be curious, the grant request we sent to the Government of The Bahamas comprised over $1 million. This far more realistic for what we need for the Dundas. It includes not only critical upgrades to our buildings and grounds, but also development of further facilities and—most important of all—staff.
People are quick to criticise the Dundas for not doing x, y or z, but few people know that there are no full-time workers at all. Most of the people you see around the place are doing it free of charge, out of passion or the goodness of a heart, or else getting paid a pittance. And by a pittance I mean a pittance. We offer theatre management and artistic direction and administration for only pennies over minimum wage. When we go, it goes; no one else can begin to afford to do what we do and keep the doors open for the so-called “remuneration” that is given. The Dundas is a volunteer entity and we want it to continue beyond the lifespans of the volunteers (who are, basically, senior citizens whose lifespans are finite, as lifespans are.)
We’re building for the future. Investment is not only needed, but it will pay off handsomely. So dig deep, if you’re thinking about it, and support us often.
The government’s $340,000 is an investment. The people of The Bahamas will see a return. Nuff said about that.
Private funding
But there’s another side to our development. It’s those quiet members of the community whose commitment to what we do you will never see, but which has kept us going since we got slammed by COVID.
These people are anonymous but their investment has been critical—and substantial. It’s been in dollars, in small gifts over time, in kind through services, equipment, items, and expertise. It’s been in connections, in cutting through red tape, in putting in a good word, in holding politicians’ feet to fire.
These investments range from cash donations here and there when people come to the theatre to the installation of our generator, the surveying of our land, the engaging of engineers and architects, to the donation of a container, to buying out the theatre on opening nights to give our resident companies enough revenue to stay current with the rent. They involve the investment of time and expertise: in the development of the Black Box Open Mic, raising friends and supporters, extending our mission, exposing new talent, adding to our offerings all round. They involve the grit and hard work of the people who pulled together the recent Drive-Thru Dollar Day, which raised some good ol’ cash for the Dundas, and which reminded motorists that we exist, we are not dead, we are alive and rising like a phoenix.
These investments really paid off with this year’s raffle, which kicked off our fundraising activities for 2025 and which netted a good chunk of the first $100k needed in our $400k bid.
But they are also the little stuff too: the people who work for hours and hours with no pay. We try to compensate them with little things, like cookies and coffee and food and a cast fridge we keep stocked with drinks that get them beyond the requisite water from the cooler. We’re here because these people stick with us, and they keep coming back. Time is money, folks, and these folks give their time.
International funding
In 2022, the Dundas applied for a grant from the International Fund for Cultural Diversity. Our proposal was to professionalize the theatre industry in the Bahamas. We narrowly missed being recommended, and so we took our licks, studied to find out what the weaknesses were in the application, and applied again in 2024.
This time we were successful.
This year, we have been granted $100,000 to do a series of interventions designed at professionalizing the Bahamian theatre industry. This project is worth its own post, so that’s all I’ll say for now; but we have $100,000 to spend over the next 2 years and we will be using it to help make theatre in this country into a profession.
So long story short: in the space of five months, we’ve gone from a theatre who couldn’t cover our basic costs to one which now has substantial funding to work with and account for. And as big as these figures seem, they are not enough to do what we want to do, or what the nation needs us to do.
But they’re a start. They lay a strong foundation. And we’re telling you a little bit about how we’re using them in this blog.
Stay tuned!!