I completely understand the argument of bad theater-to-audience behavior. This was a major fear of mine when we decided to go forward with our campaign. We decided to wait until the last week of voting so that we only had to pursue our supporters for 7 days rather than an entire month. We also ran the campaign by telling our supporters exactly what the money would go towards and what the short and long-term affects would be on the company. So our supporters actually got very excited about the possibility of helping us win – and did an incredible amount of work rallying further support.

I will say – we saw very little gain from generic “vote for us” postings. They just don't work. Especially with as much activity as comes across on Facebook already – your plea has to matter to someone for them to spend the time. We found the greatest success by calling individuals directly. We actually threw a big phone-bank party and had everyone in the company and any available supporters bring laptops and phones and we basically worked together to personally reach out to as many voters as possible.

So yes – Chasegiving can be hugely obnoxious – or you can turn it into a social strategy to a) reach out and start a conversation with your supporters, b) rally your base around a common goal, and c) make your supporters feel successful in helping you win. I've been talking to a lot of business leaders lately about how ironic it is that people have stripped the “social” aspect our of Social Media. Facebook isn't a tool to force-feed information. It's a tool for beginning, encouraging and extending conversations. But I guess programs like Chasegiving sort of bring out the worst behavior in people.

For a company our size, that was barely eligible for traditional grants – Chasegiving was a HUGE win for us. It literally made our entire 2nd season possible without the “HOW ARE WE GOING TO PAY FOR THIS?!?!?!” stress that accompanies so many productions. It allowed us to do a complete rebranding of the company. It allowed us to significantly improve our marketing and PR resources. It made it possible for us to improve our admittedly basement-budget level of production elements. And it's made it possible for us to send Calls to Blood to FringeNYC. Those are no small things. And while it's tempting to fall into the “is it moral” debate about Chasegiving – I feel good about how we've used the money, how it made our supporters feel, and how much of a confidence-boost it gave everyone involved in TNC.