Funsavers Filling a Gap

Abstract

Through its Funsavers program, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance fills a gap in services for both cultural organizations and consumers.

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (GPCA) has been a leader within Southeastern Pennsylvania’s cultural community since its founding in 1972. It is a membership-driven organization providing advocacy and audience development to its nearly 400 members, representing a diverse group of organizations throughout the region. In addition, GPCA works to shape regional policy decisions and increases the public’s involvement in the cultural sector. All of GPCA’s efforts work to ensure that the cultural community makes the region a world-class place to live, work and play.

In the early part of the 21st century, GPCA was able to capitalize on the increasing utilization of the internet to provide a critical service to cultural organizations and those individuals who consume their performances. At that time, cultural organizations were looking for ways to increase their audience base, sell more tickets and get rid of tickets that might not get sold.

Before the days of businesses like Groupon, there was no quick and easy method for potential audience members to efficiently purchase discounted tickets to cultural performances. Performance-goers were interested in being able to peruse a variety of last-minute discounted tickets to performances they might not be willing to pay full price for, or simply desired to experience something out of their norm. At the time the only option that existed for performance-goers were last minute walk-up booths outside theaters, such as BoxTix in Boston and NYTix in New York. BoxTix and NYTix continue to run their walk-up booths, but have since expanded to providing additional discount ticket services via the internet.

In 2000-01, GPCA’s newly appointed president, Peggy Amsterdam, embarked on an audience development strategic planning process that engaged members, others from the cultural sector and individuals across the region. Out of the process, nine recommendations emerged, one of which was the concept of a discounted ticket program. GPCA in its role as a member-driven umbrella organization decided to tackle this problem. Thus, the program Funsavers was born in 2003.

The concept for Funsavers was a weekly email offering half-price tickets to cultural events across the region. Such events include theatre, music, dance and museums, to name just a few. Not only was this the first service of its kind being offered in the southeastern Pennsylvania region, but GPCA believes one of the first in the country. Funsavers took off immediately, proving its success for fulfilling public demand. After its launch and early media attention, Funsavers had a rapid response with 10,000 individuals signing up to receive the weekly emails. Just nine years later, there are over 100,000 individuals signed up for Funsavers.

As stated above, GPCA believes it is one of the first in the country to develop a cultural discount ticket program like Funsavers. However, other similar programs do exist throughout the country. Just two examples are Austin Tix and NJArtsTix.org. In addition, as previously mentioned, organizations like BoxTix and NYTix have branched out from their walk-up ticket booths to provide similar online services as Funsavers.