Who can put a price on arts and entertainment that nonprofits bring to the Monadnock region? A new study commissioned by Arts Alive!, a Monadnock region nonprofit consortium, has put the price tag at $16.6 million for 2008.

It’s no secret that arts and entertainment events — such as Jaffrey’s Festival of Fireworks, the Peterborough Players and the MacDowell Colony’s Annual Medal Day — draw visitors to the Monadnock region whose spending creates a ripple effect in the region.

Based on data collected from 24 arts and entertainment nonprofits in the region and surveys completed by 1,629 people in their audiences, Americans for the Arts in Washington, D.C., tracked how spending by nonprofits and their audiences impacts the local economy both directly and indirectly.

While the $16.6 million spent by nonprofits and their audiences on event-related purchases over and above the price of admission in 2008 directly supported 230 full-time equivalent jobs, generated nearly $5.8 million in personal income and $444,000 in local and state government revenue, the total economic impact is much greater, according to the study.

Based on direct and indirect measures, the $16.6 million spent supported a total of 477 full-time equivalent jobs, produced just under $10.6 million in personal income and $1.3 million in revenue for the state and local governments.

The methodology the study used to calculate the indirect impact can best be explained by the following taken from the study: “A theater company purchases a gallon of paint from the local hardware store for $20, generating the direct economic impact of the expenditure. The hardware store then uses a portion of the aforementioned $20 to pay the sales clerk’s salary; the sales clerk respends some of the money for groceries; the grocery store uses some of the money to pay its cashier; the cashier then spends some for the utility bill; and so on. The subsequent rounds of spending are the indirect economic impacts.”

Not surprisingly, 70.8 percent of the 191,709 attendees arts nonprofits recorded in 2008 were local residents, but it was visitors to the region who spent more. In fact, the study found that visitors spend twice as much as residents, $28.65 vs. $14.28.

Americans for the Arts representative Randy Cohen is scheduled to visit the region and present the study’s findings next week. Cohen will be at the Park Theatre in Jaffrey on Jan. 13 from noon-1:30 p.m., the Peterborough Historical Society on Jan. 13 from 4:30-7 p.m., Colonial Theatre in Keene on Jan. 12 from 5:30-7:30 p.m., and the Historical Society of Cheshire County on Jan. 13 from 7:30 to 9 a.m.

On Monday, Lisa Murray, development and public relations director for the Peterborough Players, said the study is invaluable to nonprofits in backing up what they already know.
“We are big contributors to the financial and economic health of the region,” she says. “The vibrancy of the area has so much to do with the arts and people are attracted to that. ... You take that away and we’re just another rural town.”

While it may be no surprise that visitors who come to the theater spend on dinner out, overnights at local establishments and gas, she said, it may not readily come to mind all the money nonprofits spend on operating their buildings, maintenance and snow plowing every year.

“These are jobs for people,” she said. “There’s all kinds of other business that gets drummed up from people coming down the road to our theater.”

In 2009, the Players partnered with bed and breakfast places and inns in the area to offer a Getaway Easy Package at discount prices, something Murray said did well for its first year, but it’s not clear how many more out-of-towners came to the area than usual with the package.

On Thursday, Nick Finnis, co-owner of the Birchwood Inn in Temple, said the Getaway Easy paid off for his business, especially given that corporate visitors to the area all but died off last November.

“That worked. It worked very well because it was not in my town or village, so you’re not stepping on anybody’s toes,” Finnis said of Getaway Easy with the Players.
Arts and culture events in his own town, which are often town fundraisers don’t always bring business his way the day of the event, he said.

“We don’t like to compete with the festival itself in that they have food vendors,” he noted, referring to the town’s annual Harvest Festival in late September. “But, even those day [visitors] look at the area and say, ‘Maybe, I’d like to come back.’”

Finnis said the event that brings him the most business is the Pumpkin Festival in Keene held every October.

“That’s been every year since we’ve been here and before and usually it’s a two-night minimum,” he said.

Two of the inn’s five rooms are already booked for next year’s Pumpkin Festival. The MacDowell Colony’s Annual Medal Day is also a draw every summer, he said.

“We could really do with a big fair coming to the Monadnock region to bring income into the area,” he said, adding, “All events bring income, but it might not be on that day.”

This story appears on Page 1 of the Jan. 5 Ledger-Transcript