Years ago, I had my own film review column affectionately known as Teddy Takes that had developed quite a following. It was an email subscription service that I managed to build over several years and was especially popular in my home market of Baltimore, Maryland. So much so, that Teddy’s Takes came to be a sponsor of free preview screenings of various major motion pictures in the region.
Now, every dad wants to be a hero, right? Consequently, some of my favorite memories from that time were when my daughter was in pre-school and elementary school and she and I got to host a number of her school pals at the various G-rated screenings. I will never forget the warm and wonderful feelings that were evoked seeing her and her classmates’ little faces light up during movies like “Frozen,” “Wreck-It-Ralph,” and “Toy Story 3.”
So, I can only imagine how Brandice Miller felt the first time she worked with Tickets for Kids Charities. She recalls, “I fell in love with the mission of Tickets for Kids Charities when I was working for a nonprofit that received tickets from Tickets for Kids. I had the opportunity to organize a trip for 900 kids to go to a Pittsburgh Pirates game! I remember walking into PNC Park and seeing the looks on the faces of those kids and just deciding right then and there that if I ever had the opportunity to work with Tickets for Kids Charities, that’s where I wanted to be.”
Brandice Miller with Steely McBeam and Iceburgh.
Dreams Do Come True
And Miller eventually did get to where she wanted to be, having been hired by the organization in 2019. “I became the Executive Director of Tickets for Kids Charities in the fall of 2024,” she proudly states. “I have now been in the nonprofit sector for nearly 20 years now.” Indeed, Miller came to Tickets for Kids after having spent more than 11 years in various senior leadership roles with the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh – everything from Operations Director to Branch Operations Manager.
So, how does it all work? Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Tickets for Kids Charities provides low-income and at-risk children with free access to athletic, cultural, educational and arts events in their communities. Founded in 1994, the organization partners with individual ticket donors, major sports leagues, entertainment venues and over 2,000 youth-serving nonprofit agencies and schools that distribute the tickets.
Brandice Miller
Miller says, “We really think of ourselves as an efficiency mechanism within the nonprofit ecosystem because we save the organizations that we give tickets to a tremendous amount of resources in not needing to reach out to all of the different venues and teams themselves. We also believe we save those ticket donors — sports teams, cultural entities and so forth — a tremendous amount of resources, as well, because we basically serve as an extension of their community outreach programs.”
As Executive Director, Miller’s duties and responsibilities are many. Chiefly, she oversees the staff in all of Tickets for Kids’ locations and throughout the organization. In addition to its Pittsburgh headquarters, the nonprofit has offices in the Twin Cities, New York, and the District of Columbia. “I also do all of the bookkeeping for the organization, all of the HR and all of the IT,” she notes. “The mission is we provide tickets for basically any event that has a cost that would prevent a child from attending. That would stand from our most expensive ticket, which was a World Series ticket last year, to our least expensive ticket being something like a ticket to a pet show at a convention center.”
She continues, “Organizations apply to be a partner with Tickets for Kids Charities. We have our own website where partners can log in and see all of the ticket opportunities we have available. They then submit requests for their groups or families.”
How Can INTIX Members Help?
The question was posed to Miller: How can INTIX members — the most connected and generous group of live event and ticketing professionals on the planet — help? Miller was quick to answer: “They are welcome to reach out to me or any member of my staff. Those who are interested in starting a relationship, go to our website. And we will likely be back at INTIX in New Orleans in January. We’re just waiting to see how that fits into our budget.”
She adds, “We certainly want tickets in the main markets, because we want to serve the most kids. Especially baseball and basketball, kids from lower-income backgrounds right now can’t even watch the sports teams in their local markets on TV because you need so many streaming services and other things. We need those teams to invest in ticket access programs in their community or it’s going to get to the point where half of the population is completely alienated from their sport or team as adults. We feel firmly that working with Tickets for Kids Charities helps build more diverse audience bases and it builds future audience bases.”
Looking ahead to 2027, Miller says she and her colleagues would love to see Tickets for Kids Charities be able to procure an endowment that will provide recurring revenue that will support operations. She concludes, “The only thing limiting the number of tickets that we distribute is the money for the talent and technology that it takes to make that happen. But make it happen we do!”
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