Case Study: Mark Morris Dance Group achieves scalable financial management and manages an $8M operating budget with Blackbaud Financial Edge

Mark Morris Dance Group - Customer Case Study

Mark Morris Dance Group (MMDG), a Brooklyn-based company founded in 1980, expanded in 2001 from a touring troupe into the Mark Morris Dance Center offering performances, classes, outreach and a school. That growth created much more complex administrative and program operations—MMDG needed a more robust accounting system to analyze multiple revenue streams, run income statements for all activities, track studio usage and billing, and handle increasingly complex payroll and reporting needs.

MMDG implemented Blackbaud’s Financial Edge (adding modules and integrating with Raiser’s Edge and third‑party systems as needed), which enabled program-level expense coding, in‑house payroll, fast reporting and detailed queries. The results: MMDG now manages an $8M operating budget with a finance team of three, grew its school from 100 to over 2,500 students, increased Dance Center revenue from $100K to more than $2M while adding studios, and can make faster, better-informed financial and programmatic decisions.

Mark Morris Dance Group

Elizabeth Fox

Chief Financial Officer