Less than a month after it announced its imminent dissolution, the National Philharmonic has managed to raise enough funds to save itself not just for the upcoming season, but “for years to come,” per a Sunday press release. The Philharmonic’s board and president raised $200,000 through an online fundraising effort, and musician Jim Kelly raised another $300,000 from private donors.

Kelly’s money arrived in the Philharmonic’s coffers on the condition that Kelly, a violist in the Philharmonic and former personnel manager of the organization, become interim president, ousting president Leanne Ferfolia. Kelly’s proposal also required that board chair Todd Eskelsen step down from his position, allowing board member Harris Miller to take his place as interim chair.

As recently as last week, it wasn’t certain whether the Philharmonic’s leadership would accept Kelly’s proposal, especially after its own fundraising efforts proved to be successful. But on Sunday the organization sent out a press release announcing the leadership change.

Kelly praised Ferfolia’s leadership in the release, particularly in helping implement a plan to dig the organization out of debt. “Unfortunately, the organization couldn’t withstand a downturn in ticket sales or expand its donations quickly enough to counteract losses that ultimately surpassed its limited financial reserves,” Kelly said in the release.

Moving forward, new leadership plans to focus its efforts more intensely on fundraising, per the release. “The board understands that raising money is Job #1, even with the windfall of the last few weeks,” said new board chair Miller. “We will be able to build upon our successes to date, and together reach ever greater heights.”

Kelly has been a violist in the orchestra for the last six years, and he owns Potter Violins in Takoma Park. He was also the personnel manager of the organization for the last two years, before being furloughed in June. Kelly announced his plan to save the National Philharmonic at Potter Violins at the end of July, in front of a crowd of supporters and employees.

The National Philharmonic’s leadership did not immediately acquiesce to Kelly’s plan, but they appeared to have had little choice—Kelly previously told DCist that the musicians were in unanimous support of his proposed takeover of the organization, and said they would refuse to play the next season without the change in leadership.

On The Kojo Nnamdi Show last week, violinist and president of the National Philharmonic Orchestra Committee Leslie Silverfine said the musicians were frustrated with leadership’s lack of communication regarding the depth of the organization’s financial troubles, both to the musicians and to the Philharmonic’s audience.

“We feel that with Jim we will have a working relationship where he will listen to what we have to say and we can work together for a better organization, one that will not fold without us being aware that it has financial problems,” Silverfine said. “We were shocked that it suddenly came to that. We had just played a wonderful Beethoven’s Ninth [Symphony] to a sellout audience, and we fully expected that the audience would be made aware that we were going through financial difficulties and would have been asked to help support us through this hard time. … We were shocked as musicians that we didn’t have a season coming up.”

Board chair Eskelsen said on Kojo Show that leadership had tried to be communicative, but perhaps did not do enough to make clear the depth of the organization’s money troubles.

“Certainly if the message didn’t get through we have to bear some responsibility. We have tried to be transparent and open,”  Eskelsen said. “We weren’t as clear as perhaps we could have been.”

Previously: 

National Philharmonic Raises Enough Money For Next Season, And There’s Another Offer On The Table
National Philharmonic Says It Will Shut Down, Citing Decline In Funding