“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery.”

That’s what Charles Dickens wrote about money and budgeting in David Copperfield. Simplistic, but true. Unfortunately, as we know, theatre and arts organizations of all kinds are contemplating a pretty miserable forecast for this year, and next, and . . .  oh, who can say when it will end?

Necessity being mother of fundraising, people are starting to get creative about using the power of the internet to expand on the usual (and ubiquitous) year-end appeal. AMC client, Terry Greiss, Executive Director of the Irondale Center, created a video appeal in an effort to shore up their faltering finances, blasted it,  posted it on Youtube and uploaded it to their website. The campaign got picked up by the Daily News and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, which we’re all hoping will  help get the word out and the dollars in.

In other news, the Times ran an article the other day on the bigger (BIGGER!) picture in arts funding, i.e. the American Recovery and Reinvestment bill, which includes a $50 million supplement for the N.E.A. to distribute directly to nonprofit arts organizations and also through state and local arts agencies. No way is this enough (is there ever enough?), but at least it offers a ray of hope that the arts will reclaim some part of the national agenda. Lord knows, they’ve been absent from the national political stage (except as a punching bag) for far too long.