Creative Stage: A Small Business Feature
When we met Madeline Bender, Founder and CEO of Creative Stage, we were instantly inspired by her innovative thinking and commitment to delivering high-quality performing arts programs to children across New York City.
Founded in Harlem, Creative Stage is an education company that offers unique performing arts programs and experiences for children, including Musical Theater Builders, Dancing Designers, and Film Makers Workshop. The programs, designed to teach skills and abilities that extend beyond the performing arts, reflect Madeline’s background as an international opera singer, arts educator, and producer. Her priority is to deliver meaningful, quality experiences to children. With her expertise, Madeline carefully hires her artist-teachers, curating a team of professional designers, actors, and musicians who work collaboratively with children to help bring their creative visions to life.
“Our teachers are the face of the company. That’s who the kids interact with, and the quality starts there,” says Madeline. “No matter the flashy classes you come up with, the nuts and bolts of our business is that you have talented teachers who are good people with solid judgment and who are also skilled at working with each other.”
As small businesses ourselves, that philosophy resonates deeply with us and reminds us that no matter how cliché it sounds, teamwork really does make the dream work. Having the business idea and individual expertise will get you started, but molding a quality team with diverse skills propels the business forward.
In Madeline’s case, her focus on quality and maintaining a strong team not only propelled the business forward, but also helped them venture beyond their original mission with the creation of Creative Stage Collective (CSC), Creative Stage’s nonprofit sister organization. CSC brings the power of childhood imagination to the stage with an amazingly talented thespian troupe.
“Creative Stage Collective offers public performances, but we still involve the kooky ideas of kids, and kids participate in the performances,” Madeline explains. “It’s a high-octane version of the same methodology we use for our wacky, fun, devised pieces that we create with children that are in our educational programs with Creative Stage.”
CSC’s existence is due in large part to the success of Creative Stage. Starting a nonprofit wasn’t in Madeline’s original plans, but positive parent feedback brewed ideas that inspired her to take her small business journey to the next level.
“Parents told us that the shows we were creating with the kids [through Creative Stage] were really funny and entertaining. It made me think – why don’t we take some of the best material and invite some professional actors to perform it? So, we did that, we got Symphony Space and did it as a scholarship fundraiser the first time, and then it kind of just went from there,” says Madeline.
By 2021, Madeline made the decision to split Creative Stage and Creative Stage Collective into two separate entities – a for-profit company and a nonprofit organization. The significance? As a nonprofit, CSC can grow without diminishing the quality of Creative Stage’s programs.
“In New York City, unless you have a lot of capital, you can’t have a ‘performing’ anything that doesn’t take a huge amount of resources, and we didn’t want to take away resources from our students and the educational piece [through Creative Stage],” says Madeline. “Launching Creative Stage Collective as a nonprofit was the only way to do that because now we can take charitable gifts and write for grants.”
Today, Creative Stage continues to thrive alongside CSC and Madeline looks forward to growing the business by picking up more school clients.
As Creative Stage’s New York banking partner, we look forward to their continued success. Across our many years of partnership with Madeline and Creative Stage, we’ve happily assisted them with various banking solutions, including a PPP loan, business bank account, and dedicated small business support.
“I have to give a big shout-out to Spring Bank because while I was hearing about so many of my colleagues not getting PPP loans during the pandemic, they totally came through and helped me get two PPP loans. Otherwise, I would probably no longer be in business,” Madeline shares.
We’re so grateful that Madeline chose us among the many banks in NY and can proudly say that we’ve also learned a ton from her small business journey. We especially admire her unwavering commitment to delivering quality services and investing in her team.
“With Spring Bank, you get the feeling that there’s an attitude that they want you to succeed, whereas other banks that I’ve dealt with, you get the attitude that you’re just a cog in a wheel, and if you make a mistake, it costs you money,” says Madeline.
Learn more about Creative Stage here. Keep up with Creative Stage Collective’s performances, including their final Summer Shebang event on September 28th, here. If you’re interested in working with a community bank in New York dedicated to your success, our doors are wide open! We look forward to meeting new customers and helping them achieve their small business dreams with our many banking solutions. To get started, learn more about our small business bank accounts and transparent lending options.