Seeking to reassure donors and supporters in the wake of the recent announcement about a deep operating deficit, the president of the board of trustees at The Yard said this week that many hands are now on deck to turn around the problem and stabilize the Chilmark summer dance colony founded by the late Patricia Nanon 36 years ago.

Board president Sarah Jane Hughes said the organization lost a substantial amount of money on its extensive artistic programs this summer.

“It was an artistically brilliant season, but it’s very expensive,” Ms. Hughes said. “If you don’t have strong contributions to go along with excellent programming, it’s harder to make ends meet.”

The $230,000 deficit was announced quietly in the Yard’s holiday newsletter this month, along with the news that artistic and executive director Wendy Taucher has left the organization.

Development director Alison Manning has been named general manager.

Ms. Hughes said operating deficits are not new at the Yard, although she acknowledged that this is the worst deficit seen yet.

“The Yard has always had a deficit of some sort, and it’s often been, in the past 10 years, in the middle five-figures; we chink away at it,” Ms. Hughes said in a telephone conversation with the Gazette.

“This last 18 months, it’s been harder to do that. It’s not because people didn’t try. The board really stepped up; it almost tripled its cash support. The board was very supportive financially and intends to be so again.”

Founded in 1974 by Patricia Nanon to provide a creative working environment for dancers and choreographers, especially in modern dance, Ms. Nanon’s own artistic field, the Yard is nestled in a 2.6-acre wooded property off Middle Road in Chilmark. Through the years the program has expanded to include an artist-in-the-schools program that provides cultural enrichment in all the Island schools.

In 2007 ownership of the property, valued at more than $2 million, was transferred from the Patricia Nanon Foundation to The Yard Inc. This was Ms. Nanon’s gift to the nonprofit company that she had created. The feisty dancer and choreographer died in 2008.

Tax returns obtained by the Gazette this week show that the organization had a $111,000 operating deficit in 2007 but in 2008 showed a small operating gain of $29,000. Total annual operating revenues are between $300,000 and $400,000 with expenses running about the same. The executive director was paid $58,000 in 2008, the last tax report year available; board members are all volunteers. The organization receives grant money from various art foundations including the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

“We were in better financial shape before 2008, certainly in the last two years it got a little worse,” Ms. Hughes said. “This year we had two tricky things happen. Our executive director [Ms. Taucher] was extremely persuasive on fund-raising and she was not ambulatory for a good two and half months, so that was a blow. And a key employee resigned in early July and it put too much work on Wendy. It was a crazy summer for us.”

She also said bluntly that the Yard is hardly alone considering the economic climate for nonprofits.

“Part of it is that in tougher times lots of donors give their money to groups that provide direct assistance to people in need, which we understand. But our facility is expensive to maintain and insure . . . we have a campus,” Ms. Hughes said, adding:

“We’re working hard to take care of this. The board felt it was very important to tell donors what was going on, we did it in a forthright fashion. It’s a tough time to raise money . . . you try to be prudent during tougher times, and I think that there is a delicate balance between prudence and trying to keep the ship running in the manner that your audience expects and your donors expect.”

In an e-mail to the Gazette Ms. Nanon’s daughter Cate Woolner underscored her mother’s generosity through the years. “Mom not only gave many, many hundreds of thousands to the Yard during her lifetime, but . . . she also gave the Yard its . . . facility in 2007,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, Ms. Taucher, who led the Yard for the last five years as its artistic director, issued her own statement yesterday, which follows:

“I love the Yard and am so proud of the magic we created there during my five-year tenure.

“We brought to the Island such international talents as Carly Simon, Limon Dance Company, Reno, Taylor 2, Ballet Boyz, Urban Bush Women, Lois Greenfield, Andre DeSheilds, Lemon Anderson, Susan Marshall, Carmen de Lavallade, Ann Bass, Ballet Jazz de Montreal, Amy Brenneman, Margie Gillis/Paola Styron, David Dorfman, Brooke Adams, Tony Shalhoub, Bob Brustein and Suzanne Vega.

“We broadened the Yard’s scope by creating YardArts!, a festival of dance, theatre, music and opera, with season passes tripling in number.

“We also expanded into the shoulder season, continued our renowned choreography residencies, filled the summer months with festival performances and played to a majority of sold-out houses.

“And the projects we began will continue to be seen at the Yard. I’m proud to have begun the upcoming China project, Kids Creative Theatre, expanded artists-in-the-schools programs and many Island partnerships.

“As a nonprofit, the Yard has the sorts of financial challenges any organization in this economic climate faces. I continue to encourage those who love the Yard to give generously.

“As to my future, I am in New York, pursuing my own creative endeavors as a choreographer, director and author. The meetings and projects being brought to me are fantastic.

“Of course I am grateful to the hundreds of artists, audience members, students and staff members who regularly thank me for my part in the magic and meaning they find at the Yard.”

Concluded Ms. Hughes: “Considering the turnover we’ve had in senior leadership, that’s where we are. We have to raise money and pay that deficit and raise money to work on next season. We’ve had amazing generosity so far, but we still have more to go. A lot more.”