Inflation and your Pricing

Inflation isn't just all over the news. You're likely feeling it in multiple purchase areas. If you're a cultural organization that sells tickets, have you raised your ticket fees?

"Of course not!" Many of you will say. To which I will ask, "Why not?"

Have your costs to produce the work gone up? Have you increased what you're paying your staff, as their dollar is not stretching as far now (side note.. if you reduced staff pay during the pandemic, have you at least restored it to the previous level?) Sure, paying people more money makes prices for goods go up which means we have to pay people more money... Vicious circle. But why should your nonprofit have to suffer? If output goes up, input must go up to compensate. If audience members are paying more for other things in their life, that means that there is actually less money available for things like cultural programming. Demand your slice of the pie. The percent of household spending on nonprofits such as cultural programming is already small. I'm not willing to allow it to get any smaller.

I know not all of you will agree, and that's bueno. If you are purposely NOT raising your prices, are you telling your supporters that? I'm subscribed to 100+ nonprofit newsletters, and I haven't seen one mention "Our costs are going up, but we're keeping prices the same because we know it's hard for everyone right now." If you're going to eat the loss, you should be getting massive recognition for it. I can even see a healthy fundraising angle there.

So, raise your prices.

Or don't, and let everyone know why you're not.

But don't just pay more, get less, and be silent.