Don’t own your own performance space.  It’s a liability, not an asset.  Balance sheet be damned.

An asset is something you can sell.  No one wants to buy a theatre…unless it’s to tear it down.  And if it’s an Historic Building, run like the wind.

This isn’t just avoiding an “Edifice Complex.”  Unless, of course, you adore unending capital campaigns to rebuild the defects your company “cheaped out” on.  Find funding for what you do, not where you do it.

That said, one of the most overlooked ways in which a board member can help an organization is to provide eternal, free nearby office space for the company (there’s never enough inside the theatre).  It’s a major tax deduction and the perfect in-kind gift – one that actually removes a necessary expense from the budget.