Shutdown Watch: Donations Get Ford’s Theatre, D.C. Charities Going Again

Historic Ford’s Theatre will reopen—temporarily, at least—with a $25,000 emergency gift from philanthropist and theater trustee Ronald O. Perelman, the Associated Press writes.

The landmark stage, a National Park Service site whose programming is run by the private Ford’s Theatre Society, will resume performances Wednesday, and the Perelman gift will finance operations for the next eight days. The society has been losing about $100,000 a week since the shutdown darkened the theater.

Other shutdown-hit nonprofit groups across the District are getting a helping hand from the business community, according to The Washington Post.

A $250,000 donation from Capital One will return furloughed staff to work at the Latin American Youth Center, which had stripped down to essential services with federal contract reimbursements on hold. The financial-services firm also gave $100,000 in response to a United Way challenge grant to build an emergency assistance fund for local food charities.

(See a Chronicle of Philanthropy opinion column on the larger implications of “shutdown philanthropy.”)

If the federal stoppage has significantly clouded the financial and operational skies for most nonprofit groups, some cultural institutions are seeing a small ray of shutdown sunshine.

The Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, S.C., has seen tourists locked out of nearby Fort Sumter National Monument flock to its exhibition of Civil War photography, which opened shortly before the shutdown, writes Reuters. In Philadelphia, the National Constitution Center has seen attendance rise 57 percent since the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall went off-limits, and other nonprofit-run history sites are seeing upticks, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.