By Gary Steuer, CEO & President
The COVID-19 crisis is having a profound impact on the health of our cultural organizations and artists. Organizations have been closed, shows and concerts cancelled, fundraisers cancelled, or indefinitely postponed, rental events cancelled. These organizations are doing their best to continue to pay staff, both salaried and hourly, as well as artists.
The Foundation has, of course, been thinking about how we can best respond with direct and immediate assistance for our grantees. We have also decided that it is not reasonable to create an emergency fund that groups would have to apply for as virtually all our grantees are affected, and an application process would create an additional burden for organizations and our limited staff.
Unrestricted emergency funding is being provided to 43 arts & culture organizations who have received general operating and program support from Bonfils-Stanton Foundation in the past 18 months. These Denver-based organizations offer ongoing public arts & culture programming and are at risk for earned revenue loss due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. The funding amount is based on 10% of their most recent grant, with a $6,000 cap. The total grant commitment is approximately $125,000.
These grants will not require any sort of application or final report. The funding has already been released. Much has been written about how funders are taking this opportunity to shift their existing funding towards unrestricted support. The vast majority of our funding is already general operating support. We trust our grantees, and these grants are a further demonstration of that trust.
Like all foundations, our corpus (the endowment out of which we make our grants) is down significantly due to declines in the market, but this is not the time to worry about preservation of capital. It is a time for us to be there for our community. The market will rebound at some point, but many of our more fragile cultural organizations may not. Many artists and arts organizations are already finding innovative ways to use their capacity to continue to serve our community, bringing joy, artistry, learning and compassion to people through digital platforms.
We hope this direct and immediate response will inspire other funders. We also hope that when solutions to the crisis are being developed at local, state and national levels they will consider the critical need to support and sustain our artists and arts organizations.
We fully expect that this action will need to be followed by other investments and we are prepared to do what is needed to support our community’s cultural vibrancy during this time of crisis.
In addition, we are striving to be a source of up-to-date information and resources for our cultural community, and have created an area of our website that we will continually update with new information at https://bonfils-stantonfoundation.org/colorado-coronavirus/.
Thank you for your incredible leadership!
Thank you very much for this most generous and needed outreach to the non-profit world. These are unprecedented times, and they require unprecedented action. Your generosity is well met with hard working, dedicated staff in so many organizations. We all hope to weather this set of circumstances and emerge on the other side with strength and resolve to provide for the needs of Colorado. Thank you so much.
That is incredible!! I am so glad the non-profit world is getting help. I know as part of a non-profit small community theater in Loveland, we are struggling and hoping to keep our doors open. So glad Denver has such an angel, I am hoping for one in Loveland. Stay healthy everyone and the show must go on!
Thank you from a now unemployed violinist!!!
Thank you for looking out for the community.
Thank you very much for doing this. I’m working with a company that received a Bonfils-Stanton Foundation grant last November. This additional assistance is a much-needed ray of light in a landscape that has suddenly turned very murky.
When 9/11 happened, I was working for a downtown performance and visual art company in Brooklyn where we were days away from opening our most ambitious project: a series of works by Quebec artists as part of a New York City-wide festival. We had to cancel, and the artists were evacuated to New Jersey by boat. Months later, we decided to close due to an unsustainable financial picture, including losses from the cancellation.
Not long after, we received an unsolicited five-figure check from the Carnegie Corporation which allowed us to balance the books. It made a huge difference. That helping hand now seems even more vital in retrospect – not least because it allowed our resident artists to go on to build successful individual careers without missing a beat. The work they have created and produced since has benefitted audiences, businesses and communities coast to coast on multiple levels.
Thank you again for going the extra mile to give our arts organizations the additional support they need. I’ve seen the long-term benefits of this kind of assistance, and heartily commend you for recognizing its value and the need for it in such a timely fashion.