I realized there was one more point I wanted to add to my previous blog post:

You only need a fraction of the people to say yes to you.
In fundraising, one of my managers told me I make an average of 65 phone calls per hour. (Obviously, the only reason one can average that many phone calls is because most people don't pick up.) :) Out of all those phone calls, you're doing well if you get even just one gift that week. On the singing front, I recently saw an interview with the actress Bryce Dallas Howard--in it, she talks about how the average number of jobs an established actor gets, out of the number of auditions they do, is 1 out of 64. (I'm including a link to the interview here. The part I'm referring to starts at 13:56, though the whole interview is well worth-watching.) I know that that number of auditions or phone calls seems daunting, but there's something so liberating in knowing that all you need to fund a world-class arts organization, or be an established performer, is have a fraction of the people say yes to you. All it takes is one performance to be broadcast on national radio, or one audition to get hired by an opera house--but you have to do the other 63 or so auditions to get there.