Today is the first day of the fiscal year at the Kennedy Center.

The first day of the fiscal year has always been a problematic day for me – I feel like the button on the odometer is being pushed and all the numbers go back to “0”. We just finished a great fiscal year – we did wonderful performances, managed a large education program and ended up with a surplus. But all of that is forgotten today and we must start to raise money and sell tickets as if this past year did not exist. It is scary.

This year is particularly scary. With financial markets in freefall, corporations evaporating and everyone’s stock portfolio shrinking, I have no idea really how much revenue we will earn this year. How does one prepare for a unique scenario?

All we can do is plan conservatively but for the long-term. We have created a sizable contingency fund in our budget that required us to cut a lot of expenses in the budgeting process. We may need to make more cuts although I always cut artistic programming last – it is the only thing that will create revenue for us so we can not cut artistic programming to shreds or we are certain to lose revenue for years to come.

We had done a good job of planning our art early, which allowed us to do a good deal of fund-raising early. So we enter the year with a large portion of our budgeted fundraising target already pledged. But there is a good deal more to raise.

We must monitor our financial results frequently and accurately and make budget cuts along the way if we find our contingency fund is not substantial enough to cover any shortfalls.

It will be a difficult and frightening year for all of us.