On the Boards, Seattle arts nonprofit, got $5 million. What's next?

For almost any nonprofit, receiving $5 million is a miracle. But that money isn't the end of the story; it's the beginning.

"The last three years and the next three years look so fundamentally different," said Megan Kiskaddon, who joined On the Boards as executive director in 2023.

After weathering 2 ½ difficult years of pandemic recovery, Kiskaddon and On the Boards announced last fall that local arts supporter and philanthropist Shari D. Behnke had donated $5 million to the arts nonprofit in honor of her late husband, John S. Behnke.

In discussing the grant with The Seattle Times in 2025, Kiskaddon said, "Now we're not focusing on pure survival … Now the conversation is: ‘We're obviously going to exist, what cool things do we get to do?'"

So: What are those cool things?

Now that the On the Boards team has had time to plan (and the shock has worn off), it's using this windfall to build trust with audiences, stability for artists and bridges between Seattle's creative community and the national and international scenes.

"It gives us creative freedom, and the ability to make lasting, meaningful promises to the On the Boards community," Kiskaddon said.

Dreams to reality

Let's get one thing out of the way: What became of this money isn't super exciting. But that's the whole point.

"It's been invested in a reserve (fund), and we're using the interest - we're playing the long game," Kiskaddon said.

But that news shouldn't feel anticlimactic, because the ripple effects are seismic.

Thanks to Behnke's donation, "we were able to dream, and really come from a place of aspiration, confidence and ambition" rather than survival and scarcity, Kiskaddon said, adding that OtB did all this dreaming in consultation with its wider creative community.

Since 1978, On the Boards, which now has a $1.8 million annual budget, has been presenting ambitious, experimental performance work from local, national and international artists. To further broaden its artistic horizons, OtB is piloting what it calls a "curatorial council," which will comprise New York-based curator Janet Wong and local artist Jody Kuehner (aka Cherdonna Shinatra), who will join Kiskaddon in season planning.

"I think having a plurality of voices at the table brings On the Boards into the times," Kiskaddon said of this joint artistic leadership model, which she hopes to expand even further in the future.

Creating opportunities for local artists is another top priority.

"We work within a larger ecosystem, and as other organizations go away and other spaces close or get more restricted, there are not as many places for artists to develop their work," Kiskaddon said.

This fall, in addition to the development opportunity of OtB's annual Northwest New Works program (for which the organization last year quadrupled its artist pay rate), the company will convert one of the storefronts in its Queen Anne space into a year-round paid artist residency for performers, Kiskaddon said. The residency program, currently funded by a 4Culture grant, will focus on supporting artists from King County. An open call will go out this summer.

"Artists experience such a high level of precarity to begin with," Kiskaddon said, so creating reliable programs that help them plan their practice into the future was an obvious OtB goal.

OtB can also continue its mission of removing barriers to access - which includes student and artist discounts and pay-what-you-can tickets for all shows - and focus on accessible infrastructure.

"A cheeky thing that I've been known to say is, ‘There's many reasons to not come and see experimental performance, but health shouldn't be one of them,'" Kiskaddon joked. To ensure that arts lovers can safely gather together in person, they're doubling down on safety measures like installing Far-UVC, a technology that uses UV lights to kill airborne viruses.

The funding also insulates On the Boards from the increasingly unpredictable changes in federal arts funding.

When the Trump administration added language (that was eventually overturned) to the National Endowment for the Arts stating that federal funds "shall not be used to promote gender ideology," On the Boards printed out a 21-foot-tall poster of trans artist Rose Jarboe to display outside its building ahead of Jarboe's OtB performance.

"(This money) frees us up from any feeling of needing to conform to funding forces out there," Kiskaddon said. "We can keep our integrity as an organization because we're not beholden to, say, a shift in the federal government's priorities, so On the Boards gets to remain this place for independent voices, for artists to make what they want to make without being censored, and to keep putting on shows that intentionally rub against the status quo."

An ‘unrestricted gift'

Behnke made her donation unrestricted, meaning that it came with no strings attached, reporting requirements or limitations on how the money can be used.

"It's not funding a specific initiative, it's funding the idea of the place and then trusting that place to know what's best for those funds, which is a very different paradigm than what's typical," Kiskaddon said.

Diane Lyons, the director of development at the Nonprofit Association of Washington, said this kind of open-ended gift is unusual, but is perhaps becoming less so, slowly but surely.

"I think that people are starting to recognize the value of the unrestricted gift," she said. "It just takes a lot of trust building and faith and confidence in the mission."

The COVID pandemic, Lyons said, began a wider conversation within the funding world about adaptability. "In my opinion, that was the initial impetus for people to start saying, ‘You know what? You know better than we do,'" she said. "‘We're going to trust you and give you the money and believe that you know what's best for the community that you're serving.'"

That kind of gift, Lyons said, helps a nonprofit build capacity in terms of infrastructure, technology and staff retention.

"Being able to really incentivize good people to stay in the field is huge, and unrestricted grants give you the ability to do that," she said.

The donation's snowball effect changes the way everyone at On the Boards can help devise the company's destiny.

"Now, in (fundraising) campaigns for the future, it's not about how do we survive," said OtB Development Manager Melody Rahbari, "it's how do we become the best version of ourselves - and be better for Seattle and for PNW artists - now that we don't have this doom cloud hanging over us," she said.

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This story was originally published April 29, 2026 at 4:54 PM.