Minnesota Orchestra music director Thomas Søndergård, shown onstage in 2024, attracted strong audiences during the 2023-24 season. But the nonprofit posted a deficit for the year. (Angelina Katsanis/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The Minnesota Orchestra has posted an operating loss of $3.8 million on expenses of $42.6 million — the fifth deficit the state’s largest performing arts nonprofit has seen in the past six years.

That loss in fiscal year 2024, new music director Thomas Søndergård’s first season, reflects the evaporation of federal pandemic-era assistance, such as the Paycheck Protection Program, which has buoyed the orchestra. In fiscal year 2023, with $4.5 million in forgiven PPP loans, the nonprofit posted a surplus of $1.1 million on a similarly sized budget of $42.4 million.

In announcing the operating results Wednesday, the nonprofit touted some gains: Earned revenue, from sources including ticket sales, reached $11.6 million in 2024, a record and a 22% increase over the previous year.

Ticket sales are up again this season, interim president and CEO Brent Assink said in an interview. Earlier this month, the Nordic Soundscapes Festival “exceeded our wildest expectations in terms of ticket sales, in addition to, of course, getting national attention.”

This month, both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal praised the Nordic festival inspired by Søndergård, the Danish conductor who is in his second season as music director. “Under its new leader,” the New York Times wrote, “the Minnesota Orchestra still has the pride and quality that [Osmo] Vänskä helped instill, playing with a conviction and an intensity that could put many a more heralded ensemble to shame.”

Paid capacity for those concerts was 83% and total overall capacity, including comps and underwritten tickets, hit 91%. And this was all in January, a notoriously “horrible” time for attendance, said Assink, who took over when previous CEO Michelle Miller Burns left for Dallas last year.

Patricia Kelly and other music educators, sitting side-by-side with Minnesota Orchestra musicians, perform “Jupiter,” from “The Planets,” conducted by Thomas Søndergård, during the 2024-25 Season Sampler in Minneapolis on April 27, 2024. The Minnesota Orchestra sent out an open call to music educators across Minnesota for the opportunity to perform in the orchestra and was met with an overwhelming amount of responses. The effort was made to demonstrate the importance of music educators in the state, and many students of the various educators attended the concert. (Angelina Katsanis/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

The orchestra’s previous series of deficits preceded the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nonprofit posted an $8.8 million deficit in fiscal year 2019, then a $11.7 million operating loss the following year amid the pandemic. Then, the numbers had been improving: The orchestra reported an operating loss of $656,000 for fiscal year 2022, following a return to weekly concerts, and a surplus for fiscal year 2023.

In fiscal year 2024, contributions — including grants, donations and trust distributions — came in at $25.8 million, compared with $32.6 million the year before, a difference the orchestra attributed to the loss of federal Paycheck Protection Program funding.

The record earned revenue was in large part attributed to Orchestra Hall rentals and ticket sales. Orchestra Hall was filled to 75% paid capacity and 83% total capacity, up from the previous season.

“It’s amazing to see that the audience still so clearly wants us to be here, and wants us to be making music,” said violinist Emily Switzer, chair of the Minnesota Orchestra Members Committee. Switzer started with the Minnesota Orchestra in September 2019, so her time with the organization has “really strongly been impacted by the pandemic and the gradual clawing back that all arts organizations have had to do following that,” she said.

“None of us like to see a deficit. I think we can all agree with that,” Switzer said. “But it’s shrinking.”

And the strong ticket sales and annual fund gifts are all strong indicators at a key time, she noted, as the orchestra is searching for its next CEO.

When asked whether the nonprofit could fill the gap in its budget without federal assistance, Assink pointed to philanthropy. If the philanthropic community is a pyramid, with board members and others at the very top making “transformational” gifts, then the nonprofit must focus on building the base of the pyramid.

“So people who give $1,000, $500 are the ones we need to bring in close to the orbit of the Minnesota Orchestra,” he said, “and show them what difference a gift at that level can make.”

Assink, a veteran arts administrator who has history with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, also hopes the nonprofit can boost its endowment and add to its earned revenue via a partnership with the Community Performing Arts Center, a new outdoor amphitheater.

In the meantime, the organization has shrunk its office space and reduced its staff by leaving open certain positions, rather than through a blanket hiring freeze, he said.

“We’ve got a dedicated board, dedicated staff and extraordinarily gifted musicians — sounds perfect in every way,” Assink said. “And if you don’t have those things, trying to fix the financial challenges would be infinitely harder.”