New Leash on Life, a 2008 finalist for the Frist Foundation Making a Difference Award, was profiled this week on WKRN:

Continue reading ‘2008 Salute to Excellence Finalist Profiled on WKRN’

The Tennessean has an article today on how arts organizations in Nashville and around the country are losing financial support due to the economic downturn. In response to the struggles of this community, the Kennedy Center has launched an initiative entitled “Arts in Crisis.” Their Web site is a place that arts organizations from all over the country can go to get advice, or become a mentor to a struggling nonprofit.

Nashville performing arts feel sting of recession

Falling donations spur budget cuts and layoffs

By G. Chambers Williams III
THE TENNESSEAN

Symphonies, opera and theater groups, and other performing-arts organizations are cutting budgets and laying off workers in Nashville and across the nation as ticket sales fall and contributions from big corporate donors dry up.

Arts groups traditionally depend heavily on contributions from community-minded businesses such as banks and other financial institutions, which themselves are hurting in the current economic climate, said René D. Copeland, the Tennessee Repertory Theatre group’s producing artistic director.

“It’s difficult in the not-for-profit industry in a way people might not think about,” she said. “Our customary sources of revenue are directly affected by what’s going on in the economy – discretionary spending, which affects ticket sales; the endowment money; and corporate philanthropy.

“When companies are no longer making the money they need to make, their giving is the first thing to go.”

Continue reading ‘Area Arts Organizations Feeling the Economic Strain’

From today’s Tennessean:

Frist endowment lost $1M to Madoff scheme

By Chas Sisk
THE TENNESSEAN

An endowment that helps support the Frist Center has likely lost $1 million in a fund connected to disgraced investor Bernard Madoff, but an official says the loss won’t affect this year’s contribution to the museum.

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts Foundation said Wednesday that it was one of countless investors who have lost money in an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme tied to Madoff.

The investment, which was made through a hedge fund operated by Darien, Conn.-based Maxam Capital Management, was among about $6 million in losses suffered by the endowment last year, a decline of about 27 percent of its portfolio’s value.

“We had a bad year, not unlike a lot of endowments,” said Peter Bird, the foundation’s treasurer. “An endowment that did well this past year might have been down 20 percent.”

Continue reading ‘Madoff Scheme Impacts Local Foundation’

From today’s City Paper:

Values under siege

You’re not likely to hear them grumble about the sad state of their stock portfolios. Most of them probably own no securities at all. And yet the market’s decline threatens to leave them more insecure than anyone else in the community.

They are the hungry, the homeless, the frail, the abused. They are the people who depend on the charity of organizations that, in turn, depend on funding from Nashville-area foundations.

With some market indices showing that U.S. stocks have lost half their value since January, few if any of Nashville’s scores of private foundations and similar organizations are likely to experience growth in their assets in 2008. The Frist Foundation, one of the largest, has outperformed the market – by losing only 20 to 25 percent of its asset value this year, according to President and CEO Peter F. Bird Jr.

“This is a nowhere-to-run, nowhere-to-hide investment environment,” Bird said.

Menacing times for large investors translate into a fearful atmosphere for agencies that receive foundation funding. Program fees and donations by the general public may account for much of their total dollars raised, but nonprofits grow accustomed to the reliable flow of funds that a long-term relationship with a foundation can normally provide.

Now that stream of money may be slowing, just when economic conditions are making it harder to raise cash elsewhere.

Continue reading ‘Second Harvest, Frist Foundation, Lewis Lavine Explain How Economic Crisis is Impacting Local Nonprofits’

The Center for Nonprofit Management has announced the finalists for the “Academy Awards” of the nonprofit community in Middle Tennessee.

This year Salute will present nine awards totaling nearly $160,000 for nonprofit excellence. The winner of each award will be announced at Salute to Excellence 2008 on Wednesday, October 29, 2008.

Click here to view the complete list of finalists, and don’t forget to join us in celebrating the nonprofit community at Salute 2008!