Act II Theater Gets Big Money From Monsanto Contest

is getting a hefty donation, courtesy of some pass voters and Monsanto.

Late in October, the St. Peters-based Act II found out  in Monsanto's Grow St. Louis program.

The reward for garnering the second-most votes: $10,000.

"This is just enormous is our world," Sheri Hogan, Act II Board member said. 

The non-profit relies and donations and volunteer work to run the program and is used to getting money to help fund things. This time, however, the grant is significantly large sum of money for the community theater.

"This could pay our rent for an entire season," Hogan said. "Which means that our ticket money that we get in, could be used for other things. That's just giving you an idea of how much money that means to us. I'm not saying we will use it for that, but that gives you some idea."

Hogan said Act II knew it was small and would need help getting out the vote. To combat that, Act II got the word out to every body and encouraged people to vote early and often. 

"We had a strategy that we hoped would work, and it did," Hogan said. "We had, I'd say, groups of 100 people that voted for us on a daily basis. I have a friend who very active in the League of Women Voters, so we have the League all over the United States voting for us. We had church groups voting for us. ... We had these groups of people voting for us, to say nothing of the theatrical groups in St. Louis."

Hogan said every day she was making sure everyone was voting as much as possible.

"We had a baby shower for my daughter in Indianapolis and we had the entire family voting all day," Hogan said with a laugh. "It was so much fun."

The amount of votes Act II was getting raised a few eyebrows. In a , several readers commented and accused of Act II of ballot stuffing. Monsanto said that wasn't the case.

"Everybody was within the rules of the contest," said Kathleen Manning, Media Relations Specialist at Monsanto. "It was 100 votes per email address per day. And everyone abided by that."

Act II was aware of the accusations but decided to stay out of the fire. 

"There was bantering going on that there was cheating going on, but we had been in contact with Monsanto the entire time. They knew exactly how we were doing our voting and they backed us 100 percent. We chose to stay out of the mudslinging part of that." 

Monsanto's money has restrictions on just how it can be spent. 

"They have certain criteria for the grant money," Hogan said. "It can't be used for promotion or advertisement."

It's still early, but Act II already has some ideas for how to spend the money. 

"We are an all-volunteer community theater so we're always looking for money to improve our costuming, our script selection, to hire people if we need a speciality person to come in," Hogan said. "Now we have the money to pay them."

Other ideas include improving the sound system and lightning. 

"It's just vital money that's going to help us tremendously," Hogan said.