37% drop in ASC fund drive likely means reductions in jobs, performances – or worse
By Steven Brown
sbrown@charlotteobserver.com
Posted: Monday, May. 18, 2009
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/story/730644.html
Charlotte Symphony’s last concerts of the season, energized by jazzy music, revved up the audience and surpassed the box office goal.
Yet the orchestra and Charlotte’s other cultural groups are caught in the same recession as everyone else.
Just as social services will suffer because of a plunge in the United Way’s fund drive, cultural organizations face cuts from the Arts & Science Council beginning July 1. The ASC’s 2009 campaign brought in 37 percent less than the year before: $7 million compared with $11.2 million.
So, Charlotte nonprofits are in the same situation, whether they help the homeless or play Beethoven.
“Never before has the sustainability of that work been challenged as it is with this economic crisis,” said Michael Marsicano, president of Foundation for the Carolinas. (View a list of facilities funded by the ASC.)
In the arts, where the belt-tightening started months ago, the damage might take the form of more jobs lost. Or more salaries cut. Or more performances canceled. Or at worst, arts groups shutting down.
That could happen to the Charlotte Symphony, its leaders say, if a fundraising campaign this summer doesn’t get results.
The orchestra had several years of financial troubles even before the recession. It expects to end this season in June with a deficit of about $780,000 – and that’s after receiving a one-time grant of $900,000 from the ASC.
The orchestra’s management recently asked the players – who took a pay cut in 2007 – to renegotiate their contract to save on salaries. It laid off four people from its already small office staff.
The orchestra’s future depends on fundraising this summer, executive director Jonathan Martin said. He specified only that it needs “a six-figure sum, not a seven-figure sum” to get the finances on the right track.
The board of directors provided a springboard.
A board member, after making a regular donation earlier in the season, recently pledged another $100,000 if the rest of the board would add $200,000. The strategy worked.
“We wanted the gift to help ignite increased support both within the orchestra family and in the community,” the anonymous board member said in a statement through the symphony. “We cannot imagine a Charlotte without its symphony.”
Less government support
The $7 million from this year’s ASC campaign, president Lee Keesler said, roughly equals what the council raised in 1999.
“We’re giving up 10 years (of progress) on the fund drive,” Keesler said.
Soon after the campaign, the ASC cut $1million from its administrative costs. That included eight layoffs, or nearly a third of the staff, and reduced benefits for the staff.
The ASC also expects less from governments, whose money isn’t counted with the annual campaign.
Governments, of course, have budget troubles of their own. Charlotte’s proposed budget cuts the ASC’s grant 2 percent, to $2.9 million. The ASC won’t learn how much the city and county will contribute until June.
The ASC’s next task: deciding how it will distribute its smaller pot of money. In addition to 30-plus groups that receive cash for operations, the ASC also makes one-shot grants for projects by many other arts groups, nonprofits and individual artists.
Volunteer panels that make recommendations are working on the applications, scoring them according to criteria set out by the ASC.
As it did when fundraising sagged during the post-9-11 recession, the ASC expects to suspend some of its smaller grant programs, Keesler said. But the pool of money, which includes money from both the annual campaign and government, for the main groups will still shrink by 35 percent from this year’s $11.3million.
The ASC board will ratify allocations June 10, Keesler said. The amounts won’t be final until the government funding is known.
Non-ASC groups affected
The ASC’s grants to most of its major beneficiaries account for 20 to 25 percent of a group’s income. If that portion were cut by a third, that would equal about 7 to 8 percent of their income.
“That shouldn’t be enough to cause anyone to go out of business,” Keesler said. But the groups face additional stumbling blocks. Donations and government funding directly to them are down, too.
Groups not funded by ASC are also feeling the impact.
Classical-music public radio station WDAV has seen a relatively small drop in donations. General manager Benjamin Roe tries to hold on to his sense of humor: “The buzzword in our industry is: ‘Flat is the new up.’”
But, even holding steady can be difficult.
The Mint Museum organization, which is funded by ASC, gave up on hopes of adding staff to run the bigger, uptown location that opens in autumn 2010, executive director Phil Kline said. The struggle now is “trying to hold on at all costs to the people we have.”
The latest cost of holding onto people was an across-the-board pay cut.
Encouraging signs
The picture isn’t all doom and gloom, though.
When single-ticket sales for “The Full Monty” passed $35,000 last week, the show became the highest-grossing one in Theatre Charlotte’s history, executive director Ron Law said. At the Levine Museum of the New South, tickets sales for the “Changing Places” exhibit about Charlotte’s evolution are surpassing projections by 25 percent, president Emily Zimmern said.
Even as donors have dropped away, others sometimes materialize to add green shoots to the arts world’s economy.
“We’re seeing some people step up in new ways,” said Tom Gabbard, president of the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. “They’re realizing that their support matters more than ever.”
To help Blumenthal, Gabbard said, the Doctor Family Foundation made a two-year pledge totaling $100,000. He said the center has more prospects.
“When I see people who are new to our family supporting us like this,” Gabbard said, “it boosts my spirit.”
