Social-distancing measures are wreaking havoc on businesses and nonprofits alike. Arts organizations that often rely on gatherings are being hit particularly hard. Many small and medium-size nonprofits may not survive the one-two punch of closures and the economy’s free fall, and almost every cultural institution is on precarious footing these days.
“So many cultural organizations are really thinly capitalized,” says Gary Steuer, CEO of the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, in Denver. He has been speaking with Colorado arts organizations over the last week or so, and the conversations have been alarming. “It was just story after story after story of organizations canceling productions, losing the income that comes along with that. But then also feeling a commitment to their hourly workers. That adds to the burden because they lose the income, but they keep the expense.”
His foundation decided to act by providing emergency funding to its grantees. Early this week, it mailed out checks to every organization it provided funds to over the past 18 months. Each group received a check for 10 percent of its most recent grant amount, up to $6,000 per organization. It totaled about $125,000.
He says the quick action was important to let the groups it funds know that the foundation cares about them. But he hopes it has a larger impact. “Hopefully it models behavior as an example for other funders, both locally and nationally, to look at similar steps that they might be able to take that might be outside of their normal process.”
Temporary Closure
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a $3.6 billion endowment provides a cushion, but the organization said Wednesday it expects to be closed through July and lose $100 million.
The health and safety of the museum’s employees and their economic security are top priorities, says Dan Weiss, CEO of the museum. It has committed to paying all of its staff through early April. But even that large institution, with all of its resources, is still evaluating what will happen when it is closed for so long. Layoffs are likely inevitable. Weiss has been in conversation with leaders of other large arts organizations in New York about how those institutions can help smaller ones that are much more vulnerable when revenues screech to a halt. “Institutions with limited resources have a much more existential problem,” he says. “There was a lot of discussion about doing what we can do to help them.” But at this time, it is not clear what that will be.
In the meantime, the Met is making its collection available to the public online and through social media.
While times are challenging now, Weiss has faith that once the threat of the virus passes, visitors will return, if tentatively at first. “Human beings are fundamentally social creatures, and we all yearn to be in community,” he says. “I think we’ll get back to where we need to be.”
Small Groups
It is the small arts groups that are feeling the most threatened.
In North Texas, TACA — the Arts Community Alliance, which raises money mostly from private and corporate foundations to provide operating support to small and midsize arts groups in the region, is in discussions with other entities to form an emergency relief fund to help local arts nonprofits stay afloat during the crisis.
While some arts groups are finding ways to temporarily pull through with emergency help from local funding groups like the arts alliance and government agencies, they know it won’t be enough if bans on large public gatherings continue.
Teatro Dallas is a 35-year-old professional theater troupe and one of the oldest Latino theaters in the country. The nonprofit’s assets stood at $125,633, according to its most recent tax filing in 2018, and it operates with two full-time staff members and one part-time employee. Others work on contract.
Teatro Dallas has had to postpone many of its spring performances, including its March performances of “Cement City,” a play by Bernardo Mazon Daher.
Sara Cardona, the group’s executive director, said she also had to cancel Teatro Dallas’s four education programs that were scheduled to take place this month and will likely cancel the four it had planned for April. Each of those programs usually bring in about $1,000, so canceling them is a significant loss of income for the nonprofit and for its artists, who receive about half of the revenue from such programs, said Cardona.
To shore up her organization, Cardona planned earlier this week to apply for a small-business loan to keep operating and paying her employees, actors, and others.
Luckily, on Wednesday afternoon, the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture announced it was accelerating its disbursement of funds to organizations within its Cultural Organizations Program, to which Teatro Dallas belongs. Cardona said her organization will receive 40 percent of its annual awarded operating funds, or about $29,000. That development means Cardona will not need to take out a small-business loan, though she said she will reserve that possibility for later on in the year, if necessary.
Cardona said she will use the funds to keep her staff working and to help pay the actors who were scheduled to appear in “Cement City.” With no productions or educational programming to run, Cardona and her team plan to use this time to turn their attention to a side project to digitize the theater’s archive of scripts, photos, and other materials.
While the Office of Arts and Culture grant will help, Cardona knows she will still need to raise money from other sources, like individuals and foundations, which won’t be easy.
“We just had our 35th anniversary gala in December where we raised money for scholarships for spring-break and summer camps, so it’s difficult to continually ask the same donors for more money,” said Cardona.
Like many small arts organizations, Teatro Dallas has a small pool of individual donors who support many local groups, and they can only do so much to rescue every nonprofit they support.
“We are in essence a Latinx theater company,” said Cardona. “We have good government and local support and a dedicated group of individual funders, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to do more for us.”
A Need to Improvise
Other cultural groups whose programming tells the stories of people of color are also struggling. Amy Thomas, managing director of Penumbra Theatre, a St. Paul, Minn., theater company whose work focuses on the experiences of African Americans, said in some ways arts groups have an advantage in times like these because they are adept at facing the unknown and improvising when and where they need to.
But some organizations are more nimble than others, she said.
“For theaters of color that have been historically underresourced and undercapitalized, these can be incredibly trying times,” said Thomas. “There is no padding, so to speak, no endowment, no major benefactor. But we have communities that passionately support us. People are our assets.”
Penumbra was founded in 1976, and its assets stand at just $740,177, according to its 2018 (and most recent) tax filing. It receives funding from individuals as well as corporate and private foundations and government agencies. Thomas says she and her team are staying in close contact with all of Penumbra’s supporters but are also trying to allow some time to remain thoughtful about the theater’s next steps.
“There is a risk in moving too fast or not fast enough,” said Thomas. “We are trying to strike the right balance but we know everyone is feeling the instability, the uncertainty. Many people will need resources, some critically, so we are cautious about not asking for more than what we need right now.”
Penumbra’s offices and theater are closed through March, but Thomas said she suspects it may last longer. The nonprofit was lucky in that it received a multiyear grant from the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation and were recently able to invest in infrastructure that has allowed her team to more easily work remotely.
“This is no small thing. For small theaters and theaters of color, it is critical that funders support not just our programming but our capacity and our potential. The consequences, otherwise, can be crippling,” she said.
‘We Just Didn’t See It Coming’
Meanwhile, other local community arts groups are scrambling to keep up with health warnings and trying to determine how best to keep everyone safe while staying afloat themselves.
“We just didn’t really see it coming so maybe weren’t as prepared as we could have been,” says Liz Rundorff Smith, the director of programs at the Greenville Center for Creative Arts, a community arts organization in Greenville, S.C. It has a gallery that is open to the public and offers classes and workshops. “Like a lot of nonprofits, we were just managing our day to day.”
The group has been forced to make a lot of quick decisions based on information it is reading from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from statements and guidance from government officials and other arts organizations, including the South Carolina Arts Commission.
The Greenville group was more vigilant about wiping down surfaces in its building and kept its scheduled small workshops over this past weekend, though many of its older students did not show up. The group wanted to continue to be a resource for the community while also making sure it was prioritizing health and safety, Smith says.
Then on Sunday, the governor announced that schools would close. “That changed everything,” she says.
The group is rescheduling workshops and has postponed its classes, which run for six weeks, causing a drop in revenue it relies on. At the same time, with school out, the staff members who, like Smith, have children at home, are being stretched thin. “All of the students and the staff that work with me are looking to me for answers,” she says. “I can’t keep up with what’s being asked of me. I feel this weight of responsibility for the whole community.”
Registration has begun for classes that start at the end of April, and it’s unclear if those will take place. Teaching classes using video conferencing would be complicated. Many instructors are older and are not tech-savvy so they would need help. Students would still need materials and space to work.
Smith is concerned for the long term, too. “Not only are we having to think about the fact that the income that we have may be jeopardized but giving and spending money on something like an art class could be impacted for a really long time to come,” she says. “How do you continue to make something that is not necessarily a need in someone’s budget continue to be compelling enough to warrant that expense?”
