S.F. drag club turns to nonprofit model to keep queer creativity thriving

San Francisco Chronicle​

09-05-2025

San Francisco drag club Oasis is banking on a new partnership to guarantee its future survival.
Owner D'Arcy Drollinger told the Chronicle that all of the stage shows, club nights and off-site performances presented by the South of Market nightclub will now be under the umbrella of Oasis Arts, his nonprofit organization launched in 2022.
In doing so, Drollinger, who is also executive director of Oasis Arts, can seek funding through grants and accept donations, which are tax deductible, to support its theater, cabaret and nightlife events.
Oasis Arts plans to hire a development director to create a strategy to reach individual donors at a time when arts organizations across the country are losing federal grant support.
'We spend a lot of money and resources on our productions. That coupled with rising prices of everything over the last few years with a slight decline in people going out has put us in a situation where we're realizing this is not sustainable in this model,' said Drollinger, who also serves as the first San Francisco Drag Laureate.
The nonprofit's annual budget was $500,000 in 2024, but he expects it to increase to $2 million by the end of this year now that Oasis Arts is taking over the club's programming.
'Oasis is still going to be Oasis. The space will still be the same, the bar will still run the same, but Oasis Arts is going to be the entity that is programming the space,' said Drollinger.
Drollinger reports Oasis presented 352 events in 2024 that ranged from performances in the club to curating stages at San Francisco Pride and the Outside Lands music festival's Dolores' pop-up queer dance club in Golden Gate Park. Oasis sold 48,000 tickets last year and currently makes half its annual budget through ticket sales. The largest expense is paying artists, which totaled nearly $800,000 for the year, so rather than pay performers and stage crew less or raise ticket prices, Drollinger said he would 'rather evolve than give up.'
'Making Oasis sustainable is the first priority, and then we want to raise enough money to invest more into the artists in the community,' he added.
As part of this new strategy, Drollinger plans to host a telethon on June 1, for Oasis Arts. The upcoming event hopes to see the same success as Oasis' first telethon in March 2021, when it was able to raise $270,000 to save the club from closure.
'Raising $200,000 would be great, but what we could really use is $400,000,' said Drollinger.
Oasis opened on New Years Eve 2014 under the ownership of Drollinger, fellow drag performer Heklina, along with Jason Beebout and Geoffrey Benjamin. The venue quickly became a destination for cabaret and drag stage shows, including original plays by Drollinger like his 'Champagne White' trilogy as well as recreations of classic television shows like 'Three's Company,' 'Sex and the City' and 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.'
By February 2020, Drollinger was the club's sole owner (he has six investors who are not involved in the daily operations of the club), and he helped it weather the COVID-19 pandemic closures by launching enterprises like Oasis TV, which showed old performances at the club on-demand.
He later established Oasis Arts to support queer art in the Bay Area. Among the first projects was commissioning local artists Serge Gay Jr., Elliott C. Nathan, J Manuel Carmona, Simón Malvaez and Christopher McCutcheon to paint the mural 'Showtime' in June 2022 for the exterior of the club.
In February, Oasis Arts debuted a new mural project in the club's all-gender bathroom by seven local artists and launched its own Instagram account @clubtoilet.oasis.
Oasis Arts also supported four film projects in 2024 by providing studio space and equipment. It also produced five theatrical events at Oasis and co-produced a sixth play.
'After the past decade of running Oasis, we've built an audience and I'm proud of what we've accomplished,' said Drollinger. 'But even more important to me is this idea that the queer community can make our own spaces that can thrive and exist at a moment when it feels like the rug is constantly getting pulled out from under us.'