Corporate Philanthropy

November 2001, 24 pages. Working Group on International Collaboration in the Arts, Arts International, 251 Park Avenue South, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10010-7302, 212-674-9744, 212-674-9092 fax.

As a company built on creative expression, Hallmark Cards has maintained a longstanding commitment to supporting the arts. Hallmark's charitable contributions come from the profits of Hallmark Cards, Inc., and from the Hallmark Corporate Foundation, an endowed foundation funded solely by Hallmark Cards. During the year 2000, arts and culture philanthropy totaled $2,173,897 or 23 percent of the company's overall charitable program.

On November 12, 2000, a headline on the front page of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution read, "Study finds Atlanta arts community trailing peers." A full-page story in Section A followed. This one headline challenged the city's cherished self-assessment as "cultural jewel of the South" and quietly affirmed the suspicions of many of its artists and cultural workers.

This is the story about the headline, the study, and the volunteer efforts of an incorporated ad hoc group that calls itself the Atlanta Arts Think Tank and that commissioned the landmark study.

Meetings are big business. Or, in other words, talk is not cheap. An economic impact study by Deloitte & Touche LLP demonstrated that conventions, expositions, and meetings generated $82 billion in total direct spending in 1994, supporting 1.57 million jobs.1 Meetings of associations and membership organizations, as opposed to corporate-sponsored events, account for the lion's share of this spending (68 percent). Many of these associations serve the arts and culture.

2001, 166 pages. National Arts Journalism Program, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

The cultural landscape of Maine is as rich and diverse as its natural landscape, although it is less well known. Recent initiatives have brought attention to the arts and culture of this rural state that is home to 1.4 million residents and covers two million acres, 2,000 miles of rugged (and increasingly developed) shoreline, and a vast area of working forest, farms, and urban settings not unlike its northern NewEngland neighbors.

Are Oregonians in danger of losing their cultural assets and identity? Kim Stafford [special advisor to the Joint Interim Task Force on Cultural Development] fears we are, "For Oregon is beautiful, and fragile, and her people live deep in cultural heritage that could soon be gone. We preserve wilderness in the high country; we make laws to preserve farmland; we brag about the beauty of Oregon. But how do we save our cultural identity before we become a faceless port in a global economy?

The 2001 Summer Music and Art Institute for Teachers was presented through a collaboration among Cleveland State University, Young Audiences of Cleveland, Cleveland Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra, and ICARE (the Initiative for Cultural Arts in Education, a program currently housed at the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture). The Institute was the first such collaboration by this diverse group of organizations and programs. The featured keynote speakers were Cleveland Municipal School District CEO Barbara Byrd Bennett and Elliot W.

At the Fund for Folk Culture (FFC), we have been working with Laurel Jones and Morrie Warshawski of the Bay Consulting Group (BCG) to survey the range of private support for the folk and traditional arts and investigate opportunities for increased private support in this cultural sector.