No places have been harder hit in this economic crisis than New York City and Detroit. “The financial crisis in each of these markets is making it extremely difficult for nonprofits to keep their doors open,” states, Kent Seton, from Edward Charles Foundation. “New York and Detroit cities are attempting to help out by using collective foundations and donor power to create emergency funds.”
The Ford Motor Company, financially the strongest of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, expects its giving to fall by about 40 percent from last year’s roughly $35 million, about $12 million of which went to organizations here. “We’re not making any long-term commitments at this time, nothing for capital campaigns, no new exhibitions with cultural partners,” said James G. Vella, president of the Ford Motor Company Fund. By Stephanie Strom, New York Times, March 25, 2009
The disappearance of donations from car makers, their suppliers and dealers have dealt a particularly hard hit to Detroit’s arts organizations, which Douglas Bitonti Stewart, the executive director of the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, called “the venerable and the vulnerable.” The opera canceled one show, and question marks hang over performances and exhibits at other organizations.
Recently, more than a dozen local foundations gathered to discuss whether to pool their money into an emergency fund for struggling charities and to share ideas about how to use resources limited by the stock market’s plunge. A year ago, 10 of them pledged a total of $100 million over eight years to help restructure Detroit’s economy to attract skilled workers and fill its empty houses and storefronts.
