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Playing to a Strength
Organization seeks to bolster financial health of New Haven arts groups
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Business New Haven
4/30/2001
By: BNH
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The Regional Cultural Plan for Greater New Haven has retained the Baltimore-based National Arts Stabilization (NAS) organization to help the community's most prominent arts institutions get their financial houses in order.
The "New Haven Arts Stabilization" project was launched April 24 at City Hall, the kickoff of a grant-making and technical-assistance project to benefit members of the Arts Industry Coalition, a 17-member association of area arts organizations.
Beneficiary groups include some of the community's largest non-Yale-connected arts groups: the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, the Creative Arts Workshop, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas, Long Wharf Theatre, the New Haven Colony Historical Society, the Shubert Performing Arts Center, the Neighborhood Music School and the Guilford Handcraft Center.
In the fall of 1998 the NAS was contracted by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven Inc. and the Arts Industry Coalition to assess the financial health of greater New Haven's principal arts institutions. Its assessment concluded that many were "severely undercapitalized." NAS thus recommended that a "stabilization" program be undertaken to bolster capitalization levels for local non-profit arts institutions based on a methodology that NAS says was successful in seven other cities and states.
Said Nancy Sasser, lead consultant for the NAS project in New Haven: "A stabilization project provides incentives for organizations to strengthen their working capital position and managerial skills. Other cities that provided financial incentives for stronger management and financial profiles were rewarded with organizations that grew and prospered, even during times of economic recession."
The initiative will provide technical assistance, restricted working-capital funds and seek to eliminate "negative current liquidity." It seeks to introduce accepted business disciplines in artistic environments such as balance-sheet management, strategic planning ad full board participation.
Said New Haven development administrator Henry Fernandez, a director of the project," Over the last decade, we have seen several of our premier arts organizations fall on hard times, and [we] believe that this is precisely the situations a stabilization project aims to avoid. We need NAS now more than ever and are pleased to stand behind the launch of this very comprehensive project to reinforce the strengths of New Haven's tremendous arts community."
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