When Jiashan Gege He joined the New York City Ballet’s Patron Program, the very word “fundraising” can be terror-inducing. One minute, she was doing roll-downs in the studio; the next, she was falling down the rabbit hole of cultivation emails, donor lists, and development logistics. It seems like her life transformed into a Tim Burton film titled The Nightmare Before the Artistic Catalysts Deadline. How do these relationships come to life? Gege quickly realized that donor relations are not just about raising money, they’re about creating moments of connection and trust.
Sitting in the theater, surrounded by the quiet hum before a performance, she remembers a moment during the Nutcracker dress rehearsal, when she was interacting with a donor seated right beside her. “That’s when I understood,” Gege reflects, “people don’t just give to the ballet, they give because they feel seen. And each group, whether corporate sponsors or individual patrons, translates that feeling in its own way.”
In many performing-arts institutions, fundraising can feel transactional: donations, acknowledgments, thank-you notes. Gege saw an opportunity to shift that rhythm. With her background in performing arts administration and cross-cultural project management, she approached her internship/work at New York City Ballet by learning how relationships with members and donors are built through steady, day-to-day communication. She smiles, “When it comes to individual donors, especially those giving in the Patron tier of $2,500 to $19,999 annually, the approach becomes more personalised. At that point, I was mainly handling basic communications. It was about understanding what individual supporters needed and building trust in those small interactions.” Those moments, she notes, are often where Individual Giving begins: through personal touchpoints rather than grand gestures.
And she’s right. As part of the Development team, she assisted a range of intimate donor events designed to bring patrons closer to the heart of the company — rehearsals, behind-the-scenes moments, artist conversations, and pre-performance talks. In assisting these programs, she saw how such experiences strengthened the bond between NYCB and its supporters. Her background as a dancer also helps: she senses rhythm, timing, and audience energy. That emotional intelligence allows her to read a room and craft moments that linger. Gege learnt that how to combine her dancer’s intuition with professional fundraising knowledge, and hopes to apply that understanding more practically in her future career: seeing fundraising as a way to bring people together — people from very different backgrounds who share an appreciation for the arts. Gege believes that effective fundraising in the arts starts with empathy— a lesson shaped by her time at NYCB. Through day-to-day communications with members and donors, she observed how different motivations shape long-term engagement: some respond to belonging, others to purpose. “Though my role is small, those interactions helped me understand how meaningful it is when people feel genuinely welcomed and seen. In the future, I want to carry that understanding forward and create opportunities that help people return to the feeling that first drew them to the arts.”
