The inaugural Greater Perimeter Chamber Annual Meeting celebrated the launch of a new era in business leadership across Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, and the broader Perimeter region. This pivotal event unveiled their bold vision for the future and clarified what the Chamber stands FOR: business growth, innovation, and collaboration.
Natalie DeLancey became the Executive Director of City Springs Theatre Company (CSTC) in 2021 after previously helping to form the company as the Managing Director beginning in 2017.
She is responsible for overseeing overall operations, fundraising, and artistic vision for CSTC, including raising over $2 million annually for the organization and serving roughly 50,000 patrons and students each season.
Before City Springs Theatre Company, Natalie was the Director of Arts Education & Community Outreach for ArtsBridge Foundation, the arts education outreach arm of Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. Natalie managed four types of programs including: Field Trips, Master Classes, Family Performance Series & the Georgia High School Musical Theatre Awards – Shuler Hensley Awards.
In addition, Natalie produced and directed the annual competition for the Shuler Awards and she received the program’s first-ever Southeast Regional Emmy Award for her 2017 Georgia High School Musical Theatre Awards production. Prior to ArtsBridge, Natalie served as the Artist Partnerships Manager at Young Audiences, Woodruff Arts Center.
Before joining Woodruff, she served as the Manager on Duty at the Jennie T. Anderson Theatre in the Cobb County Civic Center complex. Natalie has a performance background in musical theatre and received a BA in Theatre & Performance Studies from Kennesaw State University’s College of the Arts.
Natalie was a member of the 2014 Arts Leaders of Metro Atlanta class, selected for the inaugural 30 Under 30 program with the International Association of Venue Managers in 2015, a member of Leadership Cobb’s class of 2016, received the 2016 Ernest Barrett Award from the Cobb Chamber for her commitment to excellence, and was a member of the 2024 class of Leadership Perimeter.
She was recently awarded with the 2024 BOLD Award: Businesswoman Dedicated to Doing Good from the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce and honored as the 2024 inductee into the Georgia Theater Conference’s Hall of Fame. 
She currently serves as Chair of the Greater Perimeter Chamber of Commerce. Natalie is passionate about high-quality entertainment and arts education, and is thrilled to be in a community that fully supports those initiatives!
Connect with Natalie on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the greater perimeter. It’s time for Greater Perimeter Chamber Spotlight. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Broadcasting live from the Greater Perimeter Chamber inaugural annual meeting. So excited to be talking to my next guest, Natalie DeLancey, with City Springs Theater Company. Welcome.
Natalie DeLancey: Thank you so much, Lee. I appreciate you having me.
Lee Kantor: Well, I’m asking everybody, why are you for the Greater Perimeter Chamber?
Natalie DeLancey: Absolutely. Well, I believe in community, and I think that is exactly what the chamber cultivates. And this merger between the perimeter chamber and the Sandy Springs perimeter chamber is just absolutely necessary to become the Greater Perimeter Chamber, where we can continue to cultivate the community of businesses in the perimeter area. So I am absolutely excited to be the co-chair of the Greater Perimeter Chamber this coming year and looking forward to engaging new businesses, new members, and continuing the great work that that both chambers have done in their incredible history.
Lee Kantor: So tell us about City Springs Theater Company. How are you serving folks in that regard?
Natalie DeLancey: Absolutely. We are a nonprofit, 501 C3 local professional theater company, and we perform at the beautiful Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center. We have served over 270,000 patrons since our inception in 2018, and 135,000 students from the state of Georgia. Through arts education programs. We put on big musicals. We have ragtime coming up in March. Beautiful. The Carole King Musical coming up in May, and we just announced our eighth season, which is the producers, The Wizard of Oz a Come From Away and Mean Girls. So that’s what you can look forward to with City Springs Theater Company, and we hope that you will go to City Springs Theater. Com and get some tickets.
Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more participants like actors and actresses? Do you need more just people to attend the shows? How can we help you?
Natalie DeLancey: Well, thank you for asking that because we are a nonprofit. Ticket sales do not cover the full expenses of our productions. In fact, ticket sales cover about 65%. The remaining 35% is made up from individual, foundation and corporate donations. So we are always looking for partners to make a tax deductible gift or sponsorship to City Springs Theater Company, where we can brand those companies and businesses to ensure a mutually beneficial relationship. But as far as actors go, we see about a thousand submissions and auditions per production that we do. So we are very well equipped with incredible talent, including Atlanta professionals and as well as folks coming from New York with Broadway credits. So that part we’ve got covered. We’d love to engage the community in a deeper, meaningful way with sponsorships.
Lee Kantor: Now, when it comes to sponsorships, can you tell us a little bit about the profile of that ideal sponsor? Is it a person that has kind of a passion for theater, or is that usually kind of the case that there’s some connection with the theater, and that’s what kind of gets them over the hump to donate?
Natalie DeLancey: I definitely think it starts with a passion for theater, but we provide Provides significant marketing branding. We’ve actually served patrons from 49 states and Canada. So we do have a really large reach of patrons that are coming and participating in our productions. But I think marketing is a huge piece of what we do. We have a great digital advertising package associated, and we’re looking for both big corporations and small businesses. We have tremendous small businesses in the Sandy Springs area that have supported us since our inception and year over year. They continue to say that they are making their investment back, because our loyal patrons are coming into their businesses and buying their products. So we’ve got something for everything, and especially those who feel very passionately about arts education for the next generation and our youth.
Lee Kantor: So one more time, the website.
Natalie DeLancey: City Springs, Theatre.com we hope to see folks at a show.
Lee Kantor: All right, Natalie, thank you so much for sharing your story today.
Natalie DeLancey: Thanks, Lee. We appreciate you covering the greater perimeter chamber.
