Special Bd. of Aldermen — 11/26/2018 Page 6
an authorized non-profit, recognized in the State of New Hampshire versus waiting to get New Market Tax
Credits?
Mayor Donchess
You have to wait for me to finish the answer. Alright so we have a potential of raising from the sale of New
Market Tax Credits, but to even get to that point you have to have the design project. Number 2, the fund
raiser is telling us that we have the possibility and they are talking to some specific people who don’t wish to be
known yet, about giving half a million maybe even a million dollars for the naming rights. But they are not
going to do that without a design project. So to get the money we need to be able to show specifically what
this is going to look like.
| think you had a second question?
Ms. Bell Where are we at the $4 million dollars, what is in the bank right now?
Mayor Donchess
So what the fund raising consultant has advised that in every successful fund raising campaign that she has
worked on and if you think about say the Soup Kitchen or any of the others, in order to be successful you
should not start raising small dollar amounts. You go and you find your big donors first, you get them to
contribute and then you use that momentum to then to work to kind of medium-size, then to small donors. So
her advice has been and | think her record demonstrates she knows what she is talking about; do not go out
and try to get $100.00 donors at this point, get your committee together, solicit big donations, and get your big
donors at the beginning.
So following her advice we have not really tried to get $10.00 or $100.00, the first donation needs to be a half a
million or $1 million dollars.
Ms. Bell_| absolutely understand and | wasn’t thinking of the first round of donations having been through this
process before as an executive director in the non-profit sector in this City | know that the $10.00 and the
$20.00 donations are huge but they are a large number at the bottom of the tier. They are nowhere near the
top of the tier where you are looking at naming rights, half a million, $1 million, hundreds of thousands of
dollars or even the New Market Tax Credits, which will come from businesses to the tune of maybe $50,000.00
or something along those lines. But | think that when this was voted on by the residents of Nashua, | think
many who may be, well | don’t know what many people thought, but that there were some donors already lined
up because there was such confidence exuded by those for this project that you know, all we need is two years
to raise $4 million dollars. So either they were a pie in the sky you know dreaming in some room or they
actually had some forethought and had some discussions with people with money.
| understand naming rights, | understand large donations but people who want naming rights, they know where
the building sits. It is not like it a project in a field with nothing. It is not an empty field, it is an actual building, a
current building on Main Street so they know the location. They may not the design of every window and floor
and seat, but there must’ve been some discussion about a minimum number of seats to bring in certain acts
and how much tickets would be sold for so that there was a little bit more heft in the information for them to
think, “Ok | have money, | am a philanthropic individual who plans on spending whether it an anonymous
donation or not or naming rights” that they know where the building is. And that they know that there is going
to be extensive design work but there had to be some commitment somewhere along the way from engaged
donors and known philanthropists to have assumed that in two years, $4 million dollars could be raised,
regardless of the New Market Tax Credits, which is a whole another second step.
And | applaud you if you get that money, if you get another $2.5 million dollars from those tax credits, great.
But | think that if we are still on and another question | had was that if this Resolution goes through, does now
