When we operated as a ministry of Cedar Park, we learned how to organize people and produce theatre and we had a lot of support from the church. It wasn’t until we decided to make a go of it outside the church, however, that we realized how good we had it.

There are so many other aspects to launching and running a nonprofit organization that we didn’t really have to think about before. For example, at our last board meeting we had a discussion with Pastor Caleb Stewart, the church’s lawyer who’s helping us get started, about advantages and disadvantages of having a religious designation for the nonprofit, including how that affects our liability. We have to make sure that we are following government regulations, get liability insurance, develop a marketing plan, and rent venues. We need to find donors to fund our efforts not just for the current production but in a way that will allow us to continue to operate into the future. We need to present our organization to people who don’t know us and stand on our own merits and reputation without the benefit of the church’s reach or reputation. Now that we’re outside the church, we need to be sure that we are producing quality theatre with excellence because we don’t have the church’s reputation to fall back on so we’ll be compared with other community theaters.

Because of all these factors, we’ve decided that we need more time to launch the organization. As a result, we are scheduling the debut performances of Unto the Hills for November 2020. This will give us time to organize, raise funds, and do it all with excellence. We will use this cast to produce a promo video, shop scenes, and present selections to churches and groups of potential donors.