Citizens Can Fill The Philanthropy Gap

Today's financial crisis is global and it means significant struggles for businesses right here in our community, resulting in layoffs, mergers, bankruptcies, closings, and game-changing cutbacks in corporate philanthropy to our cultural arts organizations.

What does a symphony or theater or museum do if its budget now faces a deficit of $100,000 in corporate giving? What about a deficit of a million dollars? Or even a thousand-dollar deficit for a small all-volunteer gallery? Pleading with the corporations won't work. Not now.

There is a solution and it is straightforward. We -- our community's citizens -- have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to step forward and counter the corporate giving gap that is now facing our cultural arts organizations. This is the time for us to transfer our appreciated securities, to direct our donor-advised funds, to write our checks, to make our grand gifts that we've been saving for the future. The rainy day is here. Right now.

WHY ARE our cultural arts organizations worthy of our generosity? You probably know about some of their accomplishments. Do you know that Blackbird (our city's world-famous online literary magazine) shared never-before-published Sylvia Plath poetry with every computer-connected community in the world? Do you know that Partners in the Arts (a program that uses arts to help teach core subjects) transformed the lives of 400 freshmen at Powhatan High School by using dance, literature, and sculpture to teach the Holocaust as well as today's examples of hatred and genocide?

Do you know about the Richmond Concert Band's ongoing welcome to no-audition musicians to join the band as it annually performs for multitudes? Do you know about Richmond Jazz Society's work providing jazz programming and therapy for nursing homes and participatory programs for our youth?

Do you know about Gallery5's ever-passionate mission of using the arts for social change -- such as its UpRising program for middle-schoolers? Do you know that Maymont annually provides educational programming for more than 45,000 students?

THERE ARE MANY, many more continuing good works and much good news among our region's dozens and dozens of cultural arts organizations. They lift our hearts and they brighten our senses. They teach our children and they cause us to think. And of course they draw citizens, tourists, and businesses. They build our communities.

We -- our region's individual citizens -- can fill and overflow the corporate philanthropy gap that is facing our cultural arts organizations. Let us summon a season of special generosity. Let us step forward without being asked. And let us do so with urgent energy and smiling enthusiasm.

And of course if you are a decision-maker in your own large or small company, and you do have philanthropic dollars, please consider giving to the ArtsFund -- our region's "United Way for the Arts" that provides operating dollars for dozens of our cultural arts organizations. Contact the Arts Council to get started.

This is the season for all of us who call the Greater Richmond region our home to embrace the familiar maxim: charity begins at home.
John Bryan is president of the Arts Council of Richmond, and may be contacted at or (804) 340-5284. B.J. Brown is the executive director of the Richmond Jazz Society. Joan Oates is a patron of the cultural arts.