May 3, 2000 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Ford Foundation will next week give a total of $40-million to 28 arts groups across the United States. The one-time grants of $1-million to $2.5-million are intended to send a signal to individual donors, especially those with new wealth created by the booming U.S. economy, that the arts deserve philanthropic gifts.
The Ford Foundation’s president, Susan Berresford, said she hoped the program, called New Directions/New Donors, would cause potential donors in every state to take a look at their own communities and find an arts group worthy of support.
“We very deliberately scanned the entire country,” Ms. Berresford said, “knowing that there were plenty of experienced and effective arts groups that were not yet in our spotlight.”
The Ford grantees represent eight disciplines, including dance, literature, music, new media, and theater. Though some of the recipients are venerable arts groups on the two coasts — such as the San Francisco Ballet and Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum — about half of the 28 are relatively small groups outside of New York and California.
The Center for Puppetry Arts, in Atlanta, for example, will receive a $1.25-million grant, which the organization is expected to match by raising $1.25-million over the next three years in new or increased gifts from individuals. A $1-million grant will go to the Western Folklife Center, based in Elko, Nev. The center, best-known for its annual Cowboy Poetry Gathering, has pledged to more than match the grant over the next three years.
Fourteen of the groups haven’t been Ford grantees before. And in a few cases the grant will just about equal the size of the group’s yearly budget.
The $40-million commitment by Ford is in addition to the foundation’s current support for arts in the United States, which averages $15-million annually. The new grants must be used for endowments and other permanent capital purposes. In addition to the $40-million awarded to the arts groups, Ford announced that it would give $2.5-million to the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a New York organization that will document and communicate the grantees’ lessons in building support from individuals.
“We want individual donors to consider helping an organization that’s doing interesting creative new work to gain financial stability for the long term,” Ms. Berresford said. “We’re trying to trigger that continuing support.”
More details will be published in The Chronicle’s May 18 issue, which will be available online as of May 15.
