When the curtain rises

Arts and culture have always needed business support. But business is discovering it needs the arts just as much.

Story by Sean Fitzgerald

The business community always had an inkling that arts and cultural attractions in our communities provide some ancillary impact for recruiting top-notch employees.

But more than just a bulleted item on a community welcome brochure, arts organizations are proving to be so much more than just a quality of life amenity.

With employees, operating expenses and the ability to draw visitors from outside the community and outside the region, the cadre of museums, concerts, libraries, theater groups and other arts entities offer more economic firepower than you might think. In some cases, the business community is discovering it needs arts and culture just as much as arts and cultural organizations need support from business.

“I truly believe that a community’s creative barometer has a factor for the business people in town,” said Joe Ferlo, executive director at Grand Opera House in downtown Oshkosh. “It’s always been a struggle to paint an arts organization as a business.”

Last year, Ferlo and his fellow arts organization leaders from the Paine Art Center and Gardens, Oshkosh Symphony Orchestra and Oshkosh Public Museum collaborated together to create the first ever economic impact study of arts and cultural organizations in Oshkosh. With financial backing from Oshkosh Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, Oshkosh Area Community Foundation and the Oshkosh Chamber of Commerce, the study used a template designed by the not-for-profit Americans for the Arts to determine the arts have more than a $6 million economic impact on Oshkosh, enough to support 180 fulltime jobs locally.

The study helped put into perspective the fact that theaters buy costumes and paint and lumber for building sets, as example, making them just as much “a living, breathing engine in the local economy” as any other business, Ferlo said.

“This helped translate what we do into a language that dovetails into what businesses are used to seeing,” Ferlo said.

That’s crucial, he explained, since nearly every arts organization in communities the size of Oshkosh, Fond du Lac or even the Fox Cities rely on a fairly hefty measure of financial support from businesses in order to develop a respectable budget from year to year. In the case of the Grand, Ferlo said about 40 percent of its annual revenue comes in the form of donations. That’s not too far off the industry standard.

“It’s vital for organizations like ours to make the community aware of the fact that soliciting donations is part of our business model,” Ferlo said. That’s where the economic impact study helps make the case that arts and cultural organizations are, in fact, operated as businesses.

Impact in the Fox Cities
Similar to Oshkosh, the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center simultaneously endeavored to scope the economic impact of arts and cultural organizations in a region of northeast Wisconsin that includes Outagamie, Calumet and Winnebago counties – excepting those in the City of Oshkosh, which had conducted its own aforementioned study. Maria Van Laanen, vice president of communications and external relations for the Fox Cities PAC, said a total of 32 various arts organizations participated in the regional study, which was shared with business leaders, and also with local government officials to help them recognize the potential tax revenue impact of the arts.

It total, the study indicated arts and cultural organizations had an economic impact or more than $28.6 million for the geography studied, the equivalent of employing more than 1,000 people fulltime.

The results of the study were particularly important to the PAC, which was constructed and opened just five years ago and has quickly become the largest arts organization in northeastern Wisconsin. The PAC was built with a substantial amount of community support and a substantial amount of hope for what it might provide the community in return. The economic impact study indicated the PAC as a standalone entity generated a more than $14.2 million economic impact, as well as more than $1.75 million in local tax revenue.

“Being a new arts organization on the scene, it really helped us be able to demonstrate the impact that we are having in this one area,” Van Laanen said. “But it’s so much more than (the dollar figures). It’s those intangible experiences – it’s those chances for a child to step outside of their experience into something new.”

Those are just the kind of enlightening, life-altering experiences arts organization leaders hope to provide patrons with upon each visit. But increasingly more often, arts executives are finding corporate donors who feel torn between giving to human services and making donations to the arts. In some cases, they’re shifting all of their philanthropic dollars toward human service initiatives, said Aaron Sherer, executive director of the Paine Art Center in Oshkosh.

“There hasn’t necessarily been an opportunity for the arts to state its own case when competing against giving money to feed starving children,” Sherer said. “We just hope people can continue to do both – donate to human service interests, but still set aside a portion to go toward the arts.

Corporate support
Businesses who proactively plan for philanthropic dollars in their annual budget can sometimes feel overwhelmed by the giving choices they face.

So how does a company determine giving to human service over arts and cultural endeavors, or even attempt to strike a balance between the two, as well as other civic and charitable causes?

Kimberly-Clark Corp. took a survey of its employees, its executive leadership and community leaders to better gauge the company’s philanthropic reputation in the community, as well as to better assess giving priorities. The company provides about $4.5 million annually to nonprofits in the Fox Valley region through its K-C Foundation, a good $1 million of which comes directly from employees, said Julia Smith Bahlman, vice president of product and technology development for Kimberly-Clark’s North Atlantic Consumer Products division.

What the survey provided was a laundry list of causes important to employees, as well as feedback from community leaders that K-C’s modesty and occasional anonymity in its philanthropic giving almost make its donations appear secretive, as well as give the impression the company isn’t doing enough to give back to the community. The company’s K-C Cares program – strictly a Fox Valley initiative for the company which Smith Bahlman helped to launch – decided to make its giving more transparent.

“We want to continue to support those things that are important to our employees,” said Smith Bahlman. “We also have a strong social responsibility to address the most pressing needs of the community.”

Kimberly-Clark matches donations made by employees to the arts dollar-for-dollar up to $10,000. Likewise, the company will make a grant of up to $500 to an arts or cultural organization for any employee who donates at least 30 hours of volunteer service to that group. The same program is open to other human service, civic and charitable causes an employee finds personally important.

Kimberly-Clark holds diversity and quality of life initiatives near the top of its corporate values, Smith Bahlman said, and believes a vibrant arts community helps enhance each area. The company has been a major sponsor for the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center, for example, since the venue opened its doors in 2002, contributing capital donations toward its construction and supporting various performances through the years.

Similar to Kimberly-Clark, Oshkosh-based CitizensFirst Credit Union makes it part of its mission to support initiatives that “make the community richer,” said Carla Altepeter, chief executive officer for CitizensFirst.

“We believe it’s our responsibility to help our community be the best it can be,” Altepeter said. “It’s a void when you don’t have organizations like the Grand, the Paine and the public museum that add value to the community and enrich our lives.”

Coming from experience, Altepeter said she’s seen communities in which arts and cultural offerings were in short supply – and didn’t make for a vibrant place to live, or to do business.

Creating a regional appeal
The economic impact data from the Fox Cities PAC demonstrates the venue isn’t just recycling dollar bills in the community, it’s attracting visitors from out of the area to help prop up the Fox Cities’ economy.

That’s been the task recently for the Paine Art Center and Gardens in Oshkosh, which has received a handful of Joint Effort Marketing grants from the state Department of Tourism in recent years. The awards are intended to aid marketing for Wisconsin events and venues outside of their immediate area. Once awarded, the responsibility falls on the grant recipient to not only attract visitors from outside the area, but to diligently demonstrate the economic benefit to the community stemming from the event. Those funds are reimbursed by the state only after such value has been demonstrated by the grant recipient.

Most recently, the Paine was awarded a state JEM grant in excess of $58,000 to market its Nutcracker in the Castle exhibit, held during the past holiday season.

The Paine’s Sherer said each of the more than 10,700 visitors to the exhibit during its eight-week run in December and January were asked to provide their zip code resulting in nearly one-third of the entire attendance coming from outside of Winnebago County. In addition, Paine staff took a brief economic impact sampling from 150 visitors to assess where else they visited and how else they spent their money in Oshkosh before and after stopping in for the Nutcracker exhibit.

Overall, the Paine reported back to the state tourism department that an estimated $376,000 in additional spending occurred in the community as a result of the exhibit. Combined with gate receipts, the exhibit provided an estimated economic impact to Oshkosh of $435,000, as reported in its JEM grant evaluation. Sherer said an emerging goal for the Paine is to stage more exhibits that hold an appeal for a larger region.

“We know that it’s a way to contribute to the overall health and economic vitality of the entire community,” he said.