DATE: Wednesday, May 7, 1997                TAG: 9705070001

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT

                                            LENGTH:   79 lines

VIRGINIA WATERFRONT ARTS FESTIVAL INTENDS TO BE A PERENNIAL

The Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival this week took a significant step toward becoming a perennial springtime showcase for the performing arts.

With $10,000 from the Celia Stern estate, the festival - in this its first season - established a permanent endowment at the 47-year-old Norfolk Foundation under the umbrella of the Hampton Roads Cultural Endowment.

The money establishing the endowment is the second $10,000 donation that the Stern estate's executor, Norfolk attorney Peter G. Decker Jr., has directed to the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival.

Now managing $65 million in permanent endowment funds, The Norfolk Foundation is among the wealthier community charitable trusts in North America.

Since its founding in 1950, The Norfolk Foundation has disbursed millions of dollars to worthy institutions and individuals.

The foundation does not solicit funds. Gifts and bequests flow to it from people who want their money to serve the public good in perpetuity.

In accepting the $10,000 Celia Stern estate donation, The Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival pledged to systematically enlarge its permanent endowment by:

1. Earmarking $1 from each ticket sale for endowment.

2. Informing all who attend festival events that fully tax-deductible endowment contributions - small, medium, large and extra large - will be welcomed.

3. Sponsoring yearly an endowment fund-raiser. (The event could be a rock concert.)

Income from the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival's endowment fund will be used to underwrite successive festival expenses. Income will increase as the endowment fattens.

Fund growth by many thousands a year is a plausible prospect, even without big contributions. The designated dollar for endowment from each ticket sale, contributions from festival supporters and the annual fund-raiser should see to that; dollars piling up like falling leaves eventually create abundance.

Now established, the endowment has the potential to attract large sums of money from private-sector benefactors to help assure the festival's future. Big gifts would be a real boost, of course: A million-dollar endowment yields, conservatively, about $50,000 a year; $10 million, $500,000.

Hampton Roads residents who value the plethora of performances that have brought additional joy, color, excitement, jobs and national - even some international - notice to Southeastern Virginia in recent weeks should seriously consider giving to the endowment. A dollar here, a hundred or a thousand dollars there, a million or more over yonder - all gifts will be welcomed. Contributions will go to work immediately for the festival's benefit, and they will work forever.

The first Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival is a smash. The festival aims to break even financially this year. Because ticket sales are brisk and audiences are responding enthusiastically to performances as diverse as the International Military Tattoo, the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra and Circus Flora, the festival may well close out its first 18-day season with no deficit.

By diverting a dollar from each ticket sale to its endowment, inviting audiences to contribute to its endowment and sponsoring a yearly fund-raiser, the festival will qualify for distributions from the Hampton Roads Cultural Endowment's undesignated - ``incentive'' - fund. Distribution from that fund, brought into being in 1994 with a $25,000 gift from the Celia Stern estate, will be based on a simple arithmetical formula.

Thus far, only the Isle of Wight Branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities is in line for incentive-fund money. Last year, the APVA branch became the first group to lodge an endowment at The Norfolk Foundation and promise to increase it methodically. This year the branch stands to gain about $1,500 from the Hampton Roads Cultural Endowment incentive fund.

With the enrollment of the Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival, the Hampton Roads Cultural Endowment has two members that could qualify for incentive-fund income. The incentive fund is modest. But that will change dramatically if generous partisans of arts and culture pour money into it. Hope that windfalls for the incentive fund are in the cards. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The

Virginian-Pilot.

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