« Volume 7, Issue 4, Spring 2008

Irvine Grants to Community Foundations
Help Build Local Support for the Arts

Like many struggling artists, Santa Rosa resident Seth Minor needed that first big break that would allow him to pursue his passion. It came in 2006, when he was selected as one of three artists to win $5,000 each in the first SonomaArts Awards for Emerging Artists, allowing him to quit his job as a welder, rent a studio and make and sell enough art to establish a career.

Soon after, Minor raised the price of his wire sculptures from $40 to $400 and found that his reputation as an artist was taking off throughout Sonoma County, leading to prominent art shows and commissioned works that will sell in the thousands of dollars.

Minor's success story is one that the Community Foundation Sonoma County and the Arts Council of Sonoma County hope will be repeated by other local artists they are supporting through their awards program. The program was created in 2006 with support from a $400,000 grant to bolster community arts resources, as part of Irvine's Communities Advancing the Arts (CAA) initiative.

Altogether, 13 community foundations in California received support in phase one of the initiative, from 2004 to 2007. And now a second, three-year phase is under way: In March, Irvine's board of directors approved $3.15 million in support to eight community foundations, from Sonoma to San Diego. The grants are intended to spur individual giving to the arts in the various regions, as well as provide regranting funds to support local artists and arts organizations.

"Community foundations play a unique role in galvanizing local support for the arts sector in their communities," said John McGuirk, Irvine's Program Director for the Arts. "We are optimistic that a second phase of CAA support will create longer-term benefits for artists and arts organizations throughout California and encourage community discussions about the vital role that arts play in society."

The outcomes of CAA have been significant. During the first phase, the participating community foundations:

• Raised more than $59 million in new assets for the arts
• Increased grants to local arts organizations by $7.8 million
• Established 181 new funds earmarked for the arts
• Increased arts assets per capita in their regions to $6.68 in 2007, up from $4.56 in 2004

The achievements were even more noteworthy, McGuirk said, because they occurred amid a statewide decline in public arts funding.

The initiative's second phase will focus on building permanent endowments for the arts and regranting that supports local artists and small and midsize arts organizations. The grants will help the foundations engage donors through giving circles, behind-the-scenes tours and receptions that connect artists and donors. Additionally, the community foundations have proposed an array of advocacy and leadership activities to spur greater public support for the arts.

Last year, the Community Foundation for Monterey County partnered with the Arts Council for Monterey County to produce "Creative Monterey County: An Action Plan," which outlined goals for tying arts planning to economic development in the region. As part of CAA's second phase, they will work to implement those goals, said Judy Sulsona, the Monterey foundation's Executive Vice President.

The community foundation also plans to explore the creation of an arts center in a migrant farmworker community in the Salinas Valley. During phase one, foundation staff provided farmworkers with the means to paint landscapes of their home towns. The program proved to be very emotional for its participants, and its popularity encouraged the foundation to expand it to other communities in the region and to include poetry and ceramics.

"Many of them feel very isolated and lonely for the people they left behind," Sulsona said. "This arts experience gave them the opportunity to paint scenery from what they remembered. It allowed some people who can't write to express themselves in other forms."

Meanwhile, at the Orange County Community Foundation, officials hope to use a $500,000, phase-two grant to capitalize on strong community interest in a vibrant arts sector.

As part of the first phase, the Orange County foundation partnered with Arts Orange County to survey area residents about the role of arts in the community. The results, published last year, showed strong interest throughout the region and underscored the importance of increased private funding. The foundation will use the phase-two grant to expand permanent funding for local arts organizations and arts education, to broaden audience participation through a countywide arts Web portal, and to support local arts organizations through a regranting program.

"Our work to build the capacity of local arts organizations will ensure that Orange County continues to benefit from one of the most creative, innovative and vibrant arts sectors to be found anywhere in the nation," said Orange County Community Foundation President Shelley Hoss. "The foundation is committed to making a lasting investment in the local arts sector, including arts education for the youth of our community."

Community Foundation Sonoma County also reached important goals during the first phase of CAA. The foundation converted already scheduled performances into annual festivals within several arts organizations' regular seasons to raise their profiles and cultivate new donors. It also advocated for greater public funding for the arts, resulting in a 1 percent tax on new development in downtown Santa Rosa earmarked for arts projects.

"What happened was that the arts organizations all ended up in the same room to coordinate these efforts and some of them had not even met each other before," said Melissa Kester, Arts Development Officer at the Sonoma County foundation. "Suddenly there was this momentum that was created among people who felt a need and excitement in working together."

That momentum will carry through in the initiative’s next three years, Kester said. The Sonoma arts organizations will support discussions to revitalize downtown Santa Rosa and will seek to raise an additional $300,000 to permanently endow the Sonoma County Artists Awards program and expand it to an annual competition that recognizes artist in several disciplines.

"We want to deepen and continue what we started," Kester said.
"I think that Irvine realized that a number of us got to a good place and saw that we could go deeper with more support."

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