08/17/2026
“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” – Servant of God Dorothy Day.
Minneapolis, MN - I recently volunteered as a fundraising committee member with Theatre in the Round, celebrating its seventy-fifth season this year.
https://www.theatreintheround.org/
I learned that the Twin Cities – Minneapolis and St Paul - have one of the highest concentrations of live theater in America—second only to New York in theater seats per capita and widely recognized as having more live theaters per capita than any U.S. metropolitan area outside New York.
I learned too that people engage with the arts differently than they engage with social services – my interest and focus for the last forty years. That creates an interesting distinction: Arts fundraising often asks, “What do you love enough to sustain?” Social-service fundraising often asks, “What problem do you care enough to solve?”
That raises a third question: “What kind of community do you want to help create?” For our 75-year-old community theater, generous patrons are not just supporting a theater. They are sustaining a place where people gather, stories are shared, volunteers discover their gifts, productions are created, neighbors become friends, and generations experience something together.
Community grows from shared experiences. A legacy theme such as “Support what moved you!” doesn’t just seek funding for a community theater; it calls donors to remember the moments that stayed with them — and to decide whether they want others to be moved in the same way.
Theatre in the Round - 75 Years on Stage. Forever in Our Hearts.
