Baby Bottle Rocket For HUGE Springtacular

"Theatre is one of the higher cultural activities that mark us as imaginative, creative and truly human."

-Dr. Glenn D. Wilson

Hey, friends. I want to share with you a fundraising event that is not only close to my heart, but to the community of Minneapolis as well.  HUGE Theatre is launching a Spring fundraiser: Springtacular! We invite you to join us in making it a big success. To be clear: HUGE’s continued existence may depend on it being a success.

Some context for anyone who may not know: After 13 years renting 3037 Lyndale from a landlord who turned out to be supporting some deeply troubling white supremacist causes, HUGE moved out of that space and purchased our current building at 2728 Lyndale in September 2023, with the remarkable help of our community and a non-profit-supporting lender who saw the value and potential of HUGE’s work. This is a big, important, near-miraculous step in our history as an organization, that will hopefully help create a truly permanent home for improv in the Twin Cities. We feel deeply grateful to have had the community support we needed to make this dream a reality.

But the fact is, HUGE is facing a critical financial bottleneck right now, because some big things over the past year have not gone according to plan. Without going too deep: we had to open months later than we planned, there is ongoing income from a cell tower we expected to have but don’t, property taxes we didn’t expect to have as a non-profit but do, and a brutal, unexpected $200K expense we had to eat to install HUGE’s HVAC on the roof because the City abruptly imposed that requirement. As a kicker, our old landlord is withholding our security deposit.

HUGE currently has about $70,000 in the bank altogether, which represents less than a month of operational expenses. Our mortgage alone is over $26,000/mo, and that is currently offset by only $4000 in rent income from Art Materials in the north half of the property (this temporary low rent was part of their agreement to sell the building). For comparison, we used to pay only $13,000/mo to rent our old space. And we’re heading toward summer, which is always our lowest-income part of the year. So we’re in a tight spot, frankly.

In the longer run, things aren’t so gloom and doom. Ticket sales so far in 2024 are up 30% from the same time last year. Our education program is absolutely thriving. Our bar is once again open and stocked. We’ve got renewed grants from the MN State Arts Board and the McKnight Foundation, with some more exciting grant opportunities in process. And once Art Materials moves out in May, we can seek a tenant for the North building who can pay market-rate rent, which would brighten our financial prospects considerably.

So we’re not just panic-feeding money into an insatiable black hole forever. But there is the very real, very imminent threat that HUGE may not last long enough to reach that new stability, if we cannot raise some funds… and fast. HUGE’s entire mission is to serve you — the improv community of the Twin Cities; you ARE the reason this place exists. So asking you to help HUGE instead is always uncomfortable for us. But we know that in order to be here to serve in the long-term, HUGE has to… you know… exist.

So we are rallying your all-hands-on effort once again; to join us in celebratory, community-centric fundraising to save our stage and secure improv’s forever home in the Twin Cities. 

We cannot do this without you. Please help us secure the #hugefuture.

P.S. A group from Baby Bottle Rocket & friends will be attending the 7:30pm show at HUGE on Friday, May 17th (Babe Train). We hope you'll join us!!

Ticket link:

https://hugetheater.vbotickets.com/event/Babe_Train_Presents_B24_Improvised_Films/124610?ref=HUGE