Temp: 31 °F
Tuesday, April 10, 2001
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By ROBERT BAXTER
and ALAN GUENTHER
Courier-Post Staff
Third in a three-part series
The Burlington County Footlighters are trying to solve a funding dilemma as heart-stopping and dramatic as one of the whodunits the theater group performs.
To expand and upgrade its season in Cinnaminson's Playhouse, the Footlighters recently targeted 40 Burlington County businesses, each with at least 100 employees, for support.
Footlighters President Bill Muldowney offered free tickets to the companies' top executives. He hoped they would be impressed enough with the quality of the Footlighters' shows to buy discounted group tickets for their employees.
Not one business executive accepted the free tickets or agreed to help. "It's discouraging," says Muldowney.
South Jersey arts groups, already underfunded by the state, face an even harder challenge prying donations from corporations and foundations.
"We've tried letters. We've tried personal contacts,'' says Pamela Grimme, playhouse director for the Footlighters. "We thought we would raise $10,000. But we've hit a blank wall."
A new study, obtained by the Courier-Post, shows that South Jersey arts groups received only 6 percent of the $12 million given statewide in the 1998 fiscal year by corporations. The study also found that 90 percent of the $ 11.25 million given by private foundations that year went to North Jersey arts groups.
The study, by the South Jersey Cultural Alliance and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, underscores the wide funding gap between arts groups in North and South Jersey.
For decades, the taxpayer-funded state arts council has awarded million-dollar grants to cultural institutions based in North Jersey while underfunding - and in some cases, not funding at all - the South's community-based cultural institutions.
Arts leaders say the council caters to the major groups in the North while failing to understand what South Jersey needs to continue to build and improve its fledgling arts groups.
As South Jersey has grown from cranberry bogs and cornfields into a thriving metropolitan area of more than 2 million people, the region is still struggling to develop its culture and identity.
Arts leaders say that resolving their groups' funding shortfalls - from the state, corporations and foundations - is critical to South Jersey's future quality of life.
The region's cultural leaders suggest a number of reforms to help solve the problem:
•Give South Jersey arts groups a full 25 percent of the arts council's budget, and increase the Legislature's overall funding for the arts council.
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•Help South Jersey get more corporate and foundation money.
•Open a central South Jersey arts marketing and fund-raising office that works for all of the region's arts groups.
•Set up a system for small arts groups to pool their resources to purchase health benefits and supplies, and share box-office, administrative and secretarial personnel.
•Allow arts groups to apply for arts council funding each year. Currently, a rejection from the council disqualifies a group from applying for general operating support for three years.
•Persuade the arts council to visit South Jersey and attend exhibits and performances to see what up-and- coming groups are doing.
The state arts council plays a crucial role, but more than strong support from Trenton is required for South Jersey arts groups to grow and prosper, regional leaders say.
"If you put all your eggs in the arts council basket, you won't go very far," says Barbara Fenhagen, the executive director of the South Jersey Performing Arts Center on Camden's Waterfront.
"The real issue is not the state's funding," adds Alan Willoughby, the president of the South Jersey Cultural Alliance and director of the Perkins Center for the Arts in Moorestown. "The issue is how we can develop programs that bring together individuals, corporations, government and foundations to increase funding."
Finding creative ways to do that represents the biggest challenge facing South Jersey arts groups, says Mark Packer, executive director of the Appel Farm Arts and Music Center in Elmer, Salem County.
"We bear some responsibility," he says. "We aren't doing a good enough job."
The lack of corporate and foundation funding for South Jersey groups illustrates the challenges ahead.
Last year, for example, the New Jersey Symphony in North Jersey snared $100,000 from Prudential Insurance Co. of America and $75,000 from Merck & Co. Inc. In South Jersey, the Mainstage Center for the Arts in Gloucester Township received $500 from Public Service Electric & Gas Co.
In Newark, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center got $3 million from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, while Mainstage received $7,000 from the Bell Atlantic Foundation.
"The problem is worse than we realized," says Dorothy Rivers, executive director of the Haddonfield Symphony. "We don't just need 25 percent of an increased budget for the arts council. We need to find ways to increase our share of funding from the private sector."
"Oh, my gosh!" exclaims Pat Chamberlin when she learned of the gaping imbalance in corporate and foundation support between North and South Jersey.
As director of the Arts and Business Partnership of Southern New Jersey, Chamberlin works to forge links between South Jersey business leaders and the more than 300 arts groups she serves throughout the eight southern counties.
Based in Haddonfield, Chamberlin's group serves this sprawling area with the help of one administrative assistant.
But Chamberlin says the answer is not to march into the Newark offices of PSE&G, Prudential and Verizon and demand a fair share of their money for the arts in South Jersey. The answer is to look harder for money from South Jersey patrons, businesses and corporations.
"It's only natural that corporations donate to causes near their headquarters," she says. And besides, major institutions like the Newark-based New Jersey Performing Arts Center and New Jersey Symphony Orchestra receive major funding because they claim they serve the entire state, she says.
Chamberlin encourages South Jersey's cultural leaders to do a better job of reaching potential donors. "You can't give if you're not asked," she says.
For the third third consecutive year, Chamberlin's group is sponsoring the Regional Business/Arts Summit on April 27 to encourage South Jersey businesses to become more involved with arts groups.
Ruth Bogutz, executive director of the Camden County Cultural & Heritage Commission, says South Jersey's arts groups need to sell themselves better.
"We are not getting the funding we deserve," says Bogutz. "But part of the problem lies with the (South Jersey) arts community itself. We haven't done a good job of telling the (larger) community we're here."
And part of the problem, says Packer of Appel Farm, is the South Jersey region itself. Laced with blue-collar suburbs and financially struggling communities, the area has little tradition of donating money to the arts.
The arts council is trying to help. This year, the council provided $306,000 to the South Jersey Cultural Alliance and the Arts and Business Partnership to promote arts in the region.
The arts council's executive director, Barbara Russo, says the council wants to continue to work with the region' s arts community. She says the council intends "to seek input and pursue opportunities that will improve the programs and services we offer" in the eight southern counties.
Echoing Russo's sentiments, council Chairman Leonard Fisher of West Orange adds: "We are committed to helping the arts flourish in South Jersey. The council is not not inflexible. We can respond to the region's special needs."
One of the primary needs, says Chamberlin, is an estimated $500,000 to open a central marketing and fund- raising office to serve all South Jersey arts groups.
Creating such an office is crucial if South Jersey arts groups are to boost their support from corporations and foundations, she says.
"Philadelphia organizations are not so dependent on state funding," Chamberlin says. Like their counterparts in North Jersey, Philadelphia theater and music groups have large marketing and development staffs that generate the kind of financial support South Jersey arts groups only dream of.
Fenhagen and Sandra Haughton, the South Jersey Performing Arts Center's artistic director, want South Jersey groups to share more than a fund-raising and marketing office.
"Because of funding constraints, we are understaffed and our growth is limited by the lack of staff," says Fenhagen. Community-based South Jersey groups have to overcome their geographical separation as well as their lack of staff, she adds.
"We need to share services through the Internet," she says. "There's a lot of redundancy in small offices. Some efficiencies can be developed if we envision them, imagine them and find the funding."
As a model, Haughton points to Pentacles, a New York City-based consortium that provides centralized services for the city's many small dance companies.
South Jersey arts leaders also are demanding more than money from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts - they want respect.
Russo was sworn in as the executive director of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1991 on the stage of the Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn. She has not returned to the Ritz since.
"We've never had anyone from the arts council come and talk with us and walk around the building," says Bruce Curless, the Ritz's producing artistic director. Curless calls for an "in-depth, on-site" visit from the arts council, which cut off the Ritz's funding this year.
Curless' complaint is echoed by other arts administrators. "You don't ever see them," says Pam Bridgeforth, executive director of the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center in Camden. "They don't know what we do."
Ed Fiscella, executive director of Mainstage Center for the Arts in Gloucester Township, says the only idea the council has about his group comes from amateur videos he has submitted as part of the grants application. Rivers says arts administrators outside New Jersey have a better understanding of the Haddonfield Symphony's educational programs than the arts council.
One solution, says Bogutz, is to increase the arts council to 21 members, one from each county. Currently, the council has 16 volunteer members appointed by the governor. Four members are from South Jersey; the rest are from Central and North Jersey.
Bogutz also invites the arts council to take a tour of South Jersey, to see firsthand the region's cultural institutions.
"I would like to show them my county," she says. "I would like them to see the traditional artists, the diverse arts organizations, attend a performance by the Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey or the South Jersey Performing Arts Center."
If Russo and her staff come to South Jersey on a listening tour, they will hear voices recommending some changes in the way the arts council conducts business.
Pattee LaVerghetta, for example, doesn't understand why her arts center could be punished for trying to get more money.
Aided by small grants, she has already taken the Center for the Arts in Southern New Jersey from the basement of a municipal building to a sparkling new home in the historic Jaggard House in Evesham.
Now she wants the New Jersey State Council on the Arts to help her reach a higher level. But under council rules, she must first surrender her $1,000-a-month grant from from Burlington County before applying for a state arts council grant - with no guarantee the council will give her any money.
Haughton says she would ask the council to make it easier to fill out grant applications. She also thinks the council should notify groups by mail or telephone if they have secured a grant.
Now, arts groups must go to Trenton at the end of July and sit through a three-hour council meeting and then stand in line to pick up an envelope that informs them not just how much money they have received, but whether they even have received a grant. She calls the process "humiliating" and "disrespectful."
Rivers also complains that many months pass before the Haddonfield Symphony receives its grant money. Last year, it took four months before the arts council's grant reached the symphony. While the arts council processed paper work, Rivers and her board had to pay interest on a bank line of credit until the state's check arrived.
Monsignor Louis Marucci, director of the Jubilate Deo Chorale and Orchestra in Camden, summarizes the feelings of many South Jersey arts leaders.
"I want the New Jersey State Council on the Arts to be the state arts council," he says. "Not the North Jersey Council on the Arts."