Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Provides Support to Help Arts Groups Survive Recession
As reported in the Philanthropy News Digest
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has announced two new approaches to its grantmaking to help performing arts organizations sustain their work in the short term so they can continue to plan for the long term.
As part of its arts program, DDCF typically awards large grants to intermediary organizations, which in turn re-grant funds to individual artists and arts organizations. For 2009, 2010, and 2011, the foundation will award an extra $2.5 million, total, for project support to the nonprofits and individual artists that receive “regrants.” These recipients will automatically receive the unrestricted operating support without any additional application or reporting requirements. In addition, DDCF will also allow organizations to use up to a third of regrants awarded before 2009 for core operational needs.
The foundation also announced a new policy that allows its president to amend existing endowment grants, such as relaxing annual payout requirements or harmonizing endowment payout schedules with an organization’s investment policies. To date, three grantees have requested and been approved for such an amendment to help meet bond requirements for unrestricted assets, to cover debts associated with a new building, and to provide the working capital needed to help an organization re-size its operations.
While renegotiating grant agreements is unusual for foundations, sixteen of the seventy-nine grantmakers responding to a recent survey by theCenter for Effective Philanthropy indicated that they had invited organizations to do so, the New York Times reports. Last year, for example, the James Irvine Foundation sent a letter to the roughly three hundred groups it supports offering flexibility on grant terms, which resulted in adjustments for about 10 percent of its grantees.
“It’s a minority of foundations, still,” CEP president Phil Buchanan told theTimes. “But it’s encouraging to see that some are seeking to be as flexible as they can.”
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