Austin ISD’s district-wide performing arts center receives its first corporate sponsor
StubHub has announced a charitable partnership with the Austin Independent School District (AISD) Performing Arts Center (PAC), including $75,000 in grant funding to help the newly constructed facility roll out a complete box office operation.
With the StubHub Foundation (a corporate advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation) donation and a new world-class box office operation, the performing arts center, which serves nearly 85,000 students across 130 schools in the Austin area, dramatically enhances its fundraising capabilities, future revenue streams and most importantly, its ability to meet the needs of students from across the Austin school district, including children from low-income communities who face tremendous barriers to access to quality arts experiences.
“AISD’s Performing Arts Center is dedicated to providing the highest quality arts experience for every student, teacher, and stakeholder in AISD by showcasing incredible talent in a state-of-the-art, professional facility,” said Greg Goodman, Director of Fine Arts. “Thanks to the generous grant from StubHub, we are able to develop an online box office that is as innovative and responsive as the facility itself. This box office is a vital piece in enhancing how we are able to serve our students and our community.”
Opened in January 2015, the state-of-the-art AISD PAC is one of the only educational facilities of its kind, designed specifically to enhance the arts experience for students and teachers in the Austin Independent School District. With a 1,200-seat main auditorium, 250-seat Black Box Theatre, dance studio, multi-purpose room, kiln room and individual recording studio, the complex literally opens doors for kids to explore their dreams in a time when arts education funding is severely limited.
StubHub partner AudienceView will provide the PAC a full online box office solution, as well as pro bono services to help train staff and launch the service.
“For StubHub and AudienceView, the mission of the AISD PAC fits squarely within our collective missions to support the performing arts industry by investing in today’s youth and specifically, through arts education,” said Jessica Erskine, StubHub Senior Head of Entertainment Communications. “With the combination of financial and in-kind resources our two companies can offer, we’re thrilled to operationalize the PAC’s box office, help it more efficiently do business, expand access to programming for all Austin students and ultimately, sell tickets and fundraise to directly benefit arts programs and the students of Austin.”
StubHub and AudienceView joined forces in 2014, significantly growing StubHub’s business in theater and the performing arts. Since then, StubHub built its first and largest tech venture to date, allowing AudienceView clients to seamlessly integrate with StubHub’s ticketing technology and reach its vast audience of performing arts ticket buyers at no additional cost, the same platform in which the PAC will now operate.
The partnership with the PAC expands upon StubHub’s robust charitable effort dedicated to supporting youth music education; the Next Stage Social Good Music Program. In its second year, the initiative is committed to putting $1 million of musical instruments into struggling public school music education programs this year. Partnering with music artists, the StubHub Foundation will identify up to 30 schools in ten markets nationwide to make donations through the support of benefit partner The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation. As a part of this program, more than $99,000 in instrument value has already been donated this year to Austin schools Travis High School and Bedichek Middle School. In total, the StubHub Foundation has donated more than $1 million to arts-related causes since 2012.