GoFundMe campaign started to support Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony musicians

The musicians who were performing with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony have started a GoFundMe campaign with a lofty goal of raising $2 million.

As of noon on Thursday, the campaign has raised more than $200,000, with organizers saying the money is earmarked for helping the musicians who appear to be out of a job.

“All of this money is going to the musicians, and our first initiative with this money is to support the musicians who are out of work,” cellist Kendra Grittani told Global News.

The $2-million goal also happens to be the same budget shortfall that the KW Symphony said it was experiencing earlier in the week.

Grittani says she hopes the musician can raise the $2 million, but she knows it is a tough ask.

“Let’s be realistic and say that $2 million in a couple of days is our hopes and dreams. It’s a little bit out there,” the cellist, who has been with the symphony for three years, said.

Grittani said if they were to reach that goal, they would not just be handing the money over to the KW Symphony board without having a seat at the decision-making table going forward.

“Let’s say we did somehow come up with the $2 million, whether it’s a combination of our GoFundMe, a new big donor or something that the board is doing as well, none of the money that we’ve raised is going back to the board without us sitting down and renegotiating and restructuring the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony organization,” she said.

Over the past weekend, the board announced it would be pulling the plug on the 2023-24 season, with few details on what was going on.

Then on Tuesday, the board announced that it needed $2 million to allow the season to go ahead and to allow time for it to re-evaluate operations.

In a release, it said it may have to seek insolvency but Grittani is hoping it does not come to that.

She is hoping there is some way to keep the organization afloat as it would take years for the musicians to restart something.

Grittani used the London Orchestra as an example, noting that it dissolved in 2015 and took years to put the pieces together for a full schedule.

“So we want to try to avoid having to rebuild from the ashes,” she said. “Obviously, if we need to do that and we need to use the money that we’re raising to do that, we will do that.

“But if there’s an option between starting from scratch and raising $2 million, where we reduced our season this year or for the next couple of years and therefore maintain access to our endowment fund and more musicians can keep their jobs, that is the ideal.”