Dayna Frank — profile dossier

Identity and role

Dayna Frank is president and CEO of First Avenue Productions, the Minneapolis concert venue and promotion company. Senator Amy Klobuchar's office described her in December 2020 as its "Owner and CEO." She co-founded the National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) in 2020 and was its first president.

Biography / career arc

A speaker biography for the Mondo.NYC music conference says Frank expanded First Avenue beyond its original club to include the Fine Line, the Turf Club, the Palace Theatre and the Fitzgerald Theater, and that she was a 2018 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. NIVA's backgrounder, dated March 18, 2021, traces the association to a March 12, 2020 Zoom call among 75 independent venues and stakeholders; its formation as a 501(c)(6) trade association was announced on April 9, 2020, with Frank as president. She was still in the post in July 2022, when Variety identified her as NIVA's board president at the group's first annual conference in Cleveland. Andre Perry was board president for the two years before June 2025.

Pandemic-relief / PPP-EIDL role

The backgrounder calls Frank "an early driver of advocacy" for the new group and says that under her guidance NIVA divided the country into 48 precincts, with state captains working as organizers with local venues and elected officials. On April 13, 2020, with funding from See Tickets, Etix and Lyte, NIVA hired the lobbying firm Akin Gump.

Klobuchar, who sponsored the Save Our Stages Act with Senator John Cornyn, thanked Frank on the Senate floor on December 21, 2020. "I want to thank Dayna Frank, who is the head of First Avenue in Minnesota," she said, and went on: "She called me one night in the beginning of the pandemic and said: I just can't make it through this without some help. They already received PPP loans, but that is not enough for these venues because of the unique circumstance where they can't partially open." The act became law on December 27, 2020, in the second COVID-19 relief package, creating the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant. Klobuchar's release on the signing put the relief at $15 billion and quoted Frank: "Senator Klobuchar then championed our call, securing First Avenue's future as an independent venue for generations to come." The Mondo biography credits NIVA with securing $16.25 billion.

At NIVA's July 2022 conference, according to Variety, SBA program director Matthew Stevens reported $14.57 billion paid out to a little over 13,000 SVOG grantees as of July 5. Frank told the magazine that recovery was not done: "I really thought that we'd be hitting the roaring '20s by now. And it is anything but. It is daily, constant, demanding, punishing challenges."

Their own relief

Federal records list four kinds of pandemic relief for First Avenue Productions, LLC, 701 1st Ave. N., Minneapolis:

PPP: a $1,518,005 loan approved April 6, 2020, through Crown Bank, reporting 357 jobs; the SBA's September 2024 file lists it as paid in full as of August 24, 2021. The file shows no second-draw loan to the company.
EIDL: a COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan first recorded on June 17, 2020, listed on USAspending with a total face value of $500,000 after its latest action on October 5, 2021.
Main Street Lending Program: a $3,000,000 Crown Bank loan originated December 9, 2020, in which the Federal Reserve's Main Street Priority Loan Facility bought a $2,850,000 participation on December 18, 2020 (3.15 percent, maturing December 9, 2025).
SVOG: $9,903,379.28 in total awards in the SBA's grant file as of July 5, 2022.

Four other entities give the same street address in the PPP and SVOG files: Palace Theatre Operations, LLC; Turf Club, LLC; Exchange Street Operations, LLC; and First and Third Productions, LLC. They took PPP loans of $245,990, $62,207, $88,380 and $90,860, all approved April 6 or 7, 2020, through Crown Bank, and SVOG awards of $3,508,971.30, $1,198,702.80, $1,614,105 and $1,517,003.78. Turf Club, LLC also has a $150,000 EIDL loan dated June 24, 2020. The Palace Theatre and the Turf Club are among the venues Frank's biography says First Avenue runs; the federal files do not name the owners of any of the five.

Legal status / controversies

No lawsuit, enforcement action or relief-program finding naming Frank or First Avenue Productions appears in the court records or agency releases we hold.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Pollstar's June 23, 2025 report on NIVA's Milwaukee conference identifies Frank as president and CEO of First Avenue Productions and as NIVA's co-founder and first president. She introduced Audrey Fix Schaefer, NIVA's longtime communications lead, when Schaefer was named board president at the opening session, and Schaefer's statement quoted Frank's line from the pandemic: "First we survive, then we thrive."

Sources held in this archive

Related profiles: Audrey Fix Schaefer; Matthew Stevens; Isabella Casillas Guzman
Guide: The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant