We often talk about the approximate 72 cents of every donated dollar that goes directly to artists. It's a number we're proud of, and one that reflects our budgeting priorities over time rather than a fixed promise attached to every dollar we raise. The real story behind that number is based in the philosophy that produces it, and the two practices we build that philosophy on: open book management and a formal pay equity policy.
Open books, on principle
We practice open book management, a concept common in the business world that we first encountered through producing theater on a shoestring budget. The idea is straightforward. Anyone working on a Flying Leap project can see that project's budget at any time, and anyone on our admin team can see both project budgets and our overall operating budget.
We think this matters because of what our industry actually looks like. We live in an economy that doesn't have much room for what we do. Theater isn't a luxury good, and it isn't mass replicable, so it struggles to fit a model built around scale and margin. That mismatch tends to produce an extractive ecosystem, where artists are underpaid and it's genuinely hard to tell who, if anyone, is profiting.
We can’t independently change the economy in which we operate, but opening our books is our answer to addressing those built in inequities. It does two things.
First, it helps people understand why we set rates the way we do and where our financial priorities sit, which builds trust and gives people room to push back on us. Someone might look at a budget and say a line item feels unfair, and that conversation only happens if the budget is visible in the first place.
Second, it opens up opportunities. A collaborator might offer to do part of a job in kind to build their portfolio, or point us toward a college intern looking for credit, or mention a Materials for the Arts membership we can use for free. Transparency turns the budget into something collaborative instead of something guarded.
What our pay equity policy actually promises
Our pay equity policy is the second pillar of financial transparency, and it's public on our website. We commit to meeting or exceeding whichever is higher: the MIT Living Wage Calculator figure for where a given artist lives, or the comparable union or guild rate for that kind of work when one exists.
Those two benchmarks come from different places. The union and guild rates tell us what the theater industry itself considers standard, for example what an actor earns on a TYA tour under an Equity contract. The MIT calculator, run by the Living Wage Institute, tells us what someone actually needs to earn to live in a specific place, and it's almost always the higher of the two figures. Because our artists and touring partners live in different cities, this means our rates flex by location. As one example we checked while writing this, the living wage for a single adult with no children in Kings County, New York was $32.48 an hour, and it drops closer to $21 an hour per adult in a two-adult household with no children. Those numbers update roughly annually, so we recheck our own rate table against the calculator regularly to make sure we're still in compliance with our own standard.
We also look to W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy, found at wageforwork.com), which sets suggested pay rates for artists across visual and performing arts based on an organization's operating budget tier. W.A.G.E. certifies both organizations that meet its standards and individual artists who commit to turning down underpaying work. Between union and guild rates, the MIT Living Wage Calculator, and W.A.G.E.'s broader arts-economy view, we're triangulating fair pay from three different directions rather than relying on any single standard.
Being honest about the limits
None of this solves the underlying problem. We work in an industry where even Broadway actors often don't earn enough to live comfortably, and no organization our size can single-handedly fix that.
What we can do, while we don't live in an economy where every artist gets paid what they deserve, is make transparency the best available interim practice. We try to build a rehearsal and production environment where people are treated with respect, paid as well as we're able, and able to cover rent and groceries with what we pay them, even when that's not the number we wish we could offer. The quality of that experience is part of the compensation too. You can work in far worse conditions for a lot less money, and we're trying hard not to be that.
That's what sits underneath the 72 cents. Not a guarantee stamped on every donation, but a running record of an organization trying to be honest, in public, about where the money goes and why.
If you’d like to make it easier for us to pay our artists what we think they deserve, make a tax-deductible donation today.