That’s the what, but what’s the why? Why strengthen our communications and outreach efforts?
First, a short intro into who the foundation is and what it stands for. We’ll dive more into the below in future posts, but it helps to provide background now for reference.
The Presser Foundation is the only foundation focused solely on music in Philadelphia County and the Greater Philadelphia region. Its holistic approach to supporting music through a variety of grantmaking approaches also makes it unique amongst other arts funders, as it gives to music organizations through special projects, operating, and capital support grants, while also supporting music students through both undergraduate and graduate awards. Finally, the Foundation provides special assistance to retired music teachers with financial need.
The Foundation is guided by its values – passion for music, integrity in every endeavor, and respect at all times. It is committed to supporting the future of music and its excellence, holds itself accountable to the highest standards, and acknowledges the value and dignity of the people it serves and with whom the Foundation works while being open to new ideas.
The Foundation is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, pro-active anti-racism and anti-bigotry in all areas of music. It rejects racism and bigotry in all their manifestations and seeks to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in our processes, practices, and decisions.
With this background in mind, let’s return to the question of why we want to do broaden our communications and outreach efforts.
The Presser Foundation wants to raise awareness about its partners, specifically in the arts community, but also in the greater philanthropic space. By increasing visibility and transparency, Presser envisions itself as not only a grantmaker, but as a collaborator and community leader in the music field and as a resource for both partners and non-partners. With enhanced communication platforms and more robust outreach, the Foundation envisions both a strengthened music community and a stronger philanthropic community.
By growing the Foundation’s communications, we are better able to share our passion for music and amplify the Foundation’s partners. We demonstrate our commitment to integrity and respect for the many partners and stakeholders that we work with while integrating Presser’s DEI efforts into these channels. Enhanced and increased communications not only increase our endeavors to uphold our values and our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, but commit us to being transparent. We believe that foundations have a responsibility to be transparent about what we do, in combination with the strong and necessary driver to share the positive and at times, difficult work that partners do.
For The Presser Foundation, the need to highlight partners has become even clearer during COVID. The arts and culture organizations have suffered. In fact, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s recent research suggests that arts and culture organizations suffered a total economic loss of $2.33 billion. In addition to the financial loss, it’s impossible to quantify other harmful effects of COVID on musicians and the arts. How many musicians have left the city or struggled to survive because of lack of work? How many organizations cut their budgets to survive, thus lessening the number of performances and the impact of those performances on their audiences? What is the impact on vendors with whom arts organizations partner with to deliver their programming? How many participants in various communities lost out on essential arts programming?
Arts and culture organizations make the community and city better, more vibrant, more attractive to transplants (myself included) and people born and raised here. They are necessary to support, and by sharing their messages and magnify their wonderful work through the Foundation’s communications, we hope to illustrate the difference they make.
So why invest in communications?
- Share information about the Foundation’s history, Theodore Presser, and why funding music matters.
- Share the Foundation’s “thought leadership” and process – Why do we do what we do? What benefit does it have to our partners, and to the sector as a whole? How can we improve on what we do?
- Share information about convenings and collaborative efforts with other funders and other organizations, both within the philanthropic sector and outside of it.
- Reflect on current trends in the field.
- And, most importantly, amplify the vital work of the Foundation’s partners.
Whether you’re another funder, a nonprofit, a music organization wanting to learn more about The Presser Foundation, a cross-sector partner wanting to make a connection, we’re here, open, and transparent. Reach out to me at arolland@presserfoundation.org.
Looking forward to hearing from you and sharing more as we move forward!
