Orchestra Pitts

[philparker]

Has anyone tried one of these collective for-charity Orchestral events like [url="http://theorchestrapitts.wix.com/theorchestrapitts"]Orchestra Pitts[/url]? I've been sent a registration form for an event in January and thought it might give me some experience? I will have to travel 60 or so miles, but it is a charitable event of which I support.

[The Jaywalker]

It's Pay-to-Play any way you look at it. The tickets for the concert are FREE and there's a donation encouraged. Going by the numbers on the website (250 piece orchestra and 280 piece choir) that's £10.6k from the musicians/choir and they only raised £11k from the event. In other words, the musicians raised almost all the money by paying to perform.

I also note there are "expenses" like hall hire and "printing and distributing music". Elsewhere on the site it states the music is emailed to you to print yourself...
Hall hire can be expensive - if it's a charity event then let the organisers pressure the Council or whoever runs the venue to provide free or greatly reduced hire and actually charge an admission fee.

It may sound cynical, but experience tells me that someone(s) will likely be taking a (perhaps handsome) cut of the money raised for their services in the event.

Would anyone working on behalf of a charity or with charitable aims ever advertise a door-to-door donations signup or street signup chuggers by saying "Here's a job doing charity fundraising...but you don't get paid, it's voluntary...in fact...YOU have to pay us to work and we fully expect to raise more money from staff than from anyone you sign up to donate." ??? NO.WAY.

The whole thing is a disgrace. Avoid.