Major opera company scaling donor development and operations infrastructure
Lyric Opera of Chicago operates on Tessitura (the nonprofit arts management standard) plus Google Workspace and SharePoint, with active migration work underway. Hiring velocity is accelerating across operations (5 roles), development (3), and support functions—notably 7 intern positions and a General Director Intern role—suggesting a rebuild of administrative capacity. The project list is heavily weighted toward donor qualification, prospect identification, and data hygiene (database cleanup, mailing list maintenance, donor briefing development), indicating a systematic effort to unlock untapped philanthropy.
Notable leadership hires: General Director Intern
Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the world's leading opera companies, founded in 1954 and based in Chicago. The organization operates a 501–1,000-person workforce spanning artistic production, development, operations, finance, and administration. The company is known for financial stability, operating in the black for 20 of the past 21 years, and has maintained high attendance historically. Current operational focus centers on strengthening the contributed revenue pipeline through improved donor qualification, prospect identification, and retention—areas supported by active database and reporting projects.
Lyric Opera uses Tessitura (core arts management platform), Google Workspace (email, calendar, docs, sheets), Microsoft Office (Word, PowerPoint, Publisher), SharePoint, and Canva. The organization is migrating documents from Google to SharePoint.
Current projects include donor and prospect identification, database cleanup and reporting, donor mailing list maintenance, mail/email/social campaign analysis, donor benefits research, ensemble scheduling, and a 75th anniversary initiative.