Some major foundations in central Indiana are narrowing grantmaking criteria so they can funnel their reduced asset streams
toward pressing needs brought on by the recession.
Indiana has its share of renowned dead writers, but the Indianapolis-Marion County Library Foundation is planning to recognize modern-day Hoosier scribes with a new and quite hefty prize.
The not-for-profit Indianapolis Historical and Educational Foundation is planning a police museum in the first floor of an old warehouse along Pennsylvania Street across from Conseco Fieldhouse.
Paul Hunt, a partner with Barnes & Thornburg, recently decided to pay seven months’ studio rent for two artists at Harrison
Center for the Arts. And the Columbia Club on Monument Circle is looking for new members.
The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s operating loss of $293,000 during the most recent fiscal year is not nearly as troubling
in the long term as the symphony’s shrinking endowment.
P.E. MacAllister has helped turn Indianapolis into a culturally vibrant city.
A commission that has drawn $12.5 million in grants and public money to promote Indianapolis’ artistic side is awaiting word
on its future.
These days, many Indianapolis arts organizations barely know where their next dollar will come from. But an innovative
fund-raising model that’s found success in other cities might provide that sorely needed cash. In Cincinnati,
a venerable not-for-profit called the United Arts Fund, founded in 1927, stages an annual workplace campaign,
then doles out the bountiful proceeds to local arts organizations.
Leaders of the 20-year-old Arts Council of Indianapolis want to broaden the organization’s approach to arts advocacy. They
say they’d like to act as a cultural broker of sorts, making sure local artists are connected with possible patrons.
