In recent years, leaders of non-profit arts groups have heard a constant refrain from their supporters in the business and foundation worlds: Become more self-reliant by becoming more entrepreneurial.

For some groups that have answered the call, the experience has been profitable. But others have found that running a business is easier said than done. For them, the lure of big profits has led to wasted efforts, lost money, and disillusionment.

Some of the most successful ventures by arts groups have involved little more than an expansion of long-standing mercantile enterprises, such as museum stores, or branching out into areas that they know best -- like the Portland Opera, which has been applying the expertise it gained in presenting classical opera to become the largest presenter of touring Broadway shows in Oregon. Last year, the opera earned more than $100,000 through such shows.

But several arts groups have created, bought, or even been given for-profit businesses that fall farther afield from their main pursuits.

In most cases, the arts groups hope that the money they earn from those business ventures will help them further their artistic missions. But many of the ventures have a second bottom line that is more difficult to measure: building audiences.

Even so, some in the non-profit world worry that the distraction of running a business is too much for many non-profit groups, and will cause traditional marketing and fund-raising activities to suffer.

“The most important thing is to make sure you are operating at capacity,” says Cynthia Massarsky, president of CWM Marketing Group in Tenafly, N.J. For instance, before a theater group contemplates opening up a high-technology consulting firm, she says, it should make sure it is doing everything it can to sell all of its tickets.

On the following pages are the stories of several unusual business ventures by arts groups -- and the reasons behind their successes and failures:

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* In San Francisco, the profits of a cutting-edge information-technology company called the Content Group are used to underwrite experimental theater.

* In Seattle, a classical-music radio station is owned by an arts consortium. And Opera America, a Washington, D.C., association of opera organizations, recently bought a catalogue company that sells opera recordings and other merchandise, even though the group had never run a private business before.

* In New York, the non-profit group Art Matters devoted a large amount of its human and financial resources to building a successful and critically acclaimed art catalogue -- only to see its investment go down the drain after the group was unable to attract adequate funds to keep the enterprise going.