The Second Chase Community Giving challenge is over and 15 Chicago theatres have pulled down $20,000 a piece, giving Chicago Theatre $300,000 of the $5 million total purse.

“It was a great community effort and everyone pulled together to make this happen,” said Lindsay Muscato, managing director for The Neo-Futurists , which came in 111th on the 200 charity list (and fourth among Chicago theatres).

“There was a lot of teamwork, a lot of vote trading, and a lot of supporting one another,” said Amanda Farrar, executive director of Barrel of Monkeys , which finished 139th.

This contrasts with the last round, which ended in January with two Chicago Theatres—Sideshow and New Colony—getting $25,000 a piece. Those theatres did it totally on their own. But when the next round came along, many small theatres had their network in place.

In fact, Theatre Seven ’s Brian Golden stayed away from the first challenge on purpose, deciding to hold out for a second contest. “I made the decision ‘no’ because we weren’t going to win and I didn’t want to do this twice,” Golden said.

Doing it again isn’t an option for those who won, but Golden was referring to the burnout rate, both for the theatres themselves and their patrons.

“I think it would be extremely difficult to rally our people to vote for us a number of times,” said Amanda Farrar, executive director of Barrel of Monkeys . “If [giving contests] continued to be a trend, it would be harder and harder to get arts organizations to rally their troops.”

Most of the theatres sent e-mails and used Facebook. Some staged events at coffee shops or in their lobbies, letting people sign up with a laptop.

“It was a lot more of a marketing strategy than a typical development strategy,” said Farrar.

The 15 Chicago theatres were all small, but their budget sizes vary from Strange Tree Group ’s $30,000 to About Face’s $750,000. About half of the Chicago theatres awarded Chase’s 20 grand have budgets under $125,000.

Most theatres are using the money to plug holes left by the state and the loss of other corporate funds. Some are using it to put toward new spaces, or space upgrades.

The Chase project is being billed as a new way to do philanthropy—utilizing social networking and grassroots organizing. The home page for the contest was on Facebook, which announces that over 500,000 charities participated in the event, which was then whittled down to 200 winners. The first place finisher won $250,000. Places 2-5 won $100,000. And the other 195 organizations were given $20,000.

But a look at the numbers breakdown makes us wonder about the efficacy of the campaign—and the real intent behind it. Chase’s page lists 2.5 million fans, but 2.5 million people did not vote. That’s probably because in order to vote, you have to download a Facebook app, which, given the many privacy concerns voiced in recent months about Facebook, gives many people pause. What information, if anything, is Chase getting about you when you download their app?

More interesting, the winning charity, HP Alliance, only got 36,869 votes. The fifth place charity, Sarvodaya, got 15,784 votes, roughly 5,000 more than the sixth place finisher, Blind Cat Rescue & Sanctuary, Inc. Wildclaw Theatre , which came in 200th, only got 1,481 votes. In fact, of the theatres, only Stage Left, which came in 55th, got over 2,000 votes. I haven’t added up all the votes, but given the fact that individuals got to vote for up to 20 organizations, and could in some instances vote for the same organization twice, we’re not talking about a huge grass roots uprising here.

That is, in fact, what induced New Colony to enter the fray last fall for the first contest. According to a January story on Arts Engagement Exchange New Colony artistic director Andy Hobgood said his company got involved with the contest when they saw that all they would need was about 1,500 votes.