The Shubert Foundation: $37.6M in Grants / $2M for HBCU Scholarships
The Shubert Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of unrestricted aid for not-for-profit theater and dance companies, recently announced a record $37.6 million in grants to not-for-profit theaters, dance companies, academic theater training programs, and related service agencies. As always, funds are unrestricted, empowering the organizations supported to utilize the funds as they see fit. To ensure support to the widest range of recipients, The Shubert Foundation maintains an open-door policy. The $37.6 million awarded is an increase of 17% in funding and the 609 grantees is a 6% increase on the total number of past recipients.
“We are delighted to increase both our funding and the number of our grantees this year,” said Diana Phillips, President of The Shubert Foundation. “While it has been exciting to see life return to the performing arts, Covid has dealt a terrible blow and there remains enormous need everywhere.” Phillips continued, “Responding to this need, and committed as we are to broadening access and eliminating barriers, we welcomed smaller budgeted first-time applicants without requiring audited financial statements this past year. I am pleased to announce that 18 of the 50 new grant recipients were added to our roster because of this change.” The number of new grant recipients has doubled on years past.
The Foundation has also announced two $1 million gifts to create endowed scholarships for theater students at the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Spelman College and Morehouse College. “The Shubert Foundation has long supported education in the performing arts, both through our relationship with The New York City Public Schools and our Shubert Scholars Program at colleges and universities,” said Chairman Robert E. Wankel. “This year, to further expand opportunities for college students of color to gain broad experiences in the performing arts, our Board approved two $1M endowments for scholarships at two HBCUs,” added Wankel.
In acknowledging this $1M gift from The Shubert Foundation, Mary Schmidt Campbell, Ph.D., President of Spelman College said, “Spelman College is honored to receive such a generous endowment gift from The Shubert Foundation in support of the developing theater artistry of women of color. With the College’s expansion and renewal of our theaters and performing spaces underway, the support of our promising young students is the perfect complement.”
David A. Thomas, Ph.D., Morehouse College President said, “Creativity is the most important talent the world will need in the future. This gift will ensure that men of color are able to use their unique artistic talents to communicate ideas, bridge cultural barriers, problem-solve, and serve as catalysts for motivation, excitement, reflection, and introspection. Leadership in the arts is one of the most critical fulfillments of the Morehouse mission.”
The Shubert Foundation is a leader in providing general operating support to professional resident theater and dance companies that develop and produce new American work. The Shubert Foundation was established in 1945 by Lee and J.J. Shubert, in memory of their brother Sam. Since the establishment of the Foundation’s grants program in 1977, more than $575 million has been awarded to not-for-profit arts organizations throughout the United States. To learn more about the Shubert Foundation programs and to find out about the upcoming fall deadlines for the 2022-23 Application Cycle go to: https://shubertfoundation.org.
Ruth Arts: New Initiative / Initial Grants
The Ruth Foundation for the Arts (Ruth Arts) debuted in the landscape of arts philanthropy with the announcement of its inaugural grantmaking cycle. The new foundation is supported by a bequest from the late Ruth DeYoung Kohler II, and expects to award grants totaling more than $17 million annually. The first class of Ruth Arts grantees—an initial round of funding that precedes the regular giving cycles that the organization will embark upon later this year—includes 78 nonprofit arts organizations that have been awarded a total of $1.25 million in funding. These individual grants range from $10,000 to $50,000 each.
The Foundation is led by Executive Director Karen Patterson, who was most recently Director of Exhibitions at The Fabric Workshop and Museum and Senior Curator at The John Michael Kohler Center for the Arts, alongside Program Director Kim Nguyen, former Curator and Head of Programs at CCA Wattis Institute. Under their leadership, the grantmaker will seek to explore new possibilities in arts philanthropy that safeguard creativity and take a people-centric approach.
“I am honored to continue Ruth’s exceptional legacy in such an impactful way,” said Patterson. “She has shown us that a thriving art community requires support for the entire ecosystem: from exhibition spaces, to festivals, to archives, to art environments, to residencies, and to school programs. We are truly a multidimensional field. We rely on one another. And none of these things would be possible without artists.”
Built from the inspiration and bequest of Ruth DeYoung Kohler II, a lifelong advocate for the midwest’s artistic community, Ruth Arts embraces the ethos of the region while operating at a national scale. The organizations funded in this initial round of grantmaking come from 29 states and range widely in size. In keeping with the spirit of Ruth Arts, which places a particular emphasis on the support of creativity in all its forms, with a focus on the unconventional and exciting, grantees were not confined to particular fields or genres of work and span a broad spectrum of culture-making.
Ruth Arts launches with a unique artist-driven nomination process for this initial round of grants, which was guided by a group of nearly 50 artists. These artists, drawn from across the country and at all stages of their careers, were asked to propose organizations they felt had deeply influenced their own engagement with art, presented visionary community programming, and connected deeply with artists’ processes. The grantees were then drawn from these nominations.
The Foundation plans to continue providing support for organizations in the arts with invitation-based awards in two cycles each year. The next cycles of Ruth Arts’ grants will be announced later this year, and will total approximately $17 million, reflecting the expected annual valuation of grants moving forward. While grants will remain on an invitation-only basis, as the foundation grows and develops, Ruth Arts will continue to work with artists to guide and inform its programming and will host their artist nominating processes on a regular basis. These leaders and visionaries across the arts, alongside Ruth Arts’ Board of Trustees—composed of some of Kohler’s beloved friends and advisors—serve to navigate Ruth Arts through the evolving arts philanthropy landscape while keeping the organization anchored in its values and origins.
“I was really excited when asked to nominate an organization,” said artist Rose B. Simpson. “I felt that the power dynamics around institutions could change, that support could come from real experiences and community dedication rather than big talk and hierarchies.”
Ruth Arts is a fitting legacy to Ruth DeYoung Kohler II, who believed passionately that the arts reveal who we are as a people: past, present, and future. She promoted equitable and inclusive access to the arts in her local community, her home state of Wisconsin, and on national and international levels. Learn more about the Ruth Foundation for the Arts at www.rutharts.org.
