Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 7, 1994 TAG: 9404080015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The concept of a united campaign for nonprofit arts and cultural organizations, some with United Way-style workplace contributions and payroll deductions, has spread to dozens of cities. According to the University of Akron's James L. Shanahan, in a 1993 report for the American Assocation for the Arts, about one in five U.S. cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000 now have them.
The Roanoke Valley isn't one of them. Nor, despite publication and release last week of "Blueprint 2000," is such an appeal in the immediate offing. The valley's museums and arts organizations may well be the poorer for it.
"Blueprint," the culmination of a three-year examination of the valley's arts-culture scene in an effort to establish a planning process for its future, merely called for more study of the idea. The timidity was born of necessity, in deference to opposition from some major organizations - two of the biggies are the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and Mill Mountain Theatre - with fund-raising mechanisms of their own. It's hard for an arts fund to be successful with more than one major organization outside its umbrella.
The reluctance of well-established groups, which often have spent years developing contributor lists and fund-raising techniques, to join united funds is understandable, and not unique to Roanoke. Against their concerns, however, must be weighed the success of properly planned and well-run united funds. They can boost and broaden a community's support for the arts both in gifts and in attendance at events.
Particularly if the united-fund money is reserved for general operating expenses, leaving individual organizations free to seek their own underwriters for specific performances, exhibits, programs, capital projects and the like, a united fund offers arts and cultural organizations the potential for sorely needed financial stability. Center in the Square is a useful model: By providing quality space rent-free to its occupants, it reduces occupant agencies' overhead and allows more of the money they raise themselves to go for other purposes.
Opponents may be assuming too quickly that the declines of recent years in corporate and governmental support of the arts merely reflect temporary economic conditions. In fact, there are signs that, while the declines have leveled off in a rebounding economy, former levels of support won't be restored. Not, anyway, without spreading a wider net.
By promoting attendance at arts events and encouraging the habit of giving by individuals, a united arts fund could boost financial support from the two sources that are growing. (In Charlotte, individual donations were up 31 percent in one recent year.) By taking upon itself the politically sensitive task of determining which groups get how much, a united arts fund also might interest the valley's local governments in increasing the scandalously low amounts they currently budget for the arts.
Even so, as the experience of putting together the "Blueprint" made clear, local arts and cultural groups themselves are unlikely to instigate such a fund. They remain too narrowly focused on autonomy.
That means the job must fall to corporate donors who see the importance of the arts to the valley's quality of life and economy, but who don't relish having to sift through a multitude of requests for a multiplicity of causes. If business leaders got together and insisted, they could transform arts fund-raising in the Roanoke Valley from a cacophony into something more harmonious.
by CNB