Orange County Community Foundation

“I am raising my son differently because of our work in the arts.” Shelley Hoss, President of the Orange County Community Foundation, is taking her organization’s newfound role in the arts personally. The story begins in the mid-1990s, when Shelley’s team recognized that arts represented “a gap in both our knowledge base and our role in this county. Living up to our responsibility to serve donors and community meant building more knowledge, relationships and value in the arts arena.” Three years into Communities Advancing the Arts, this sense of responsibility morphed into genuine passion. Says Shelley, “I have become a convert to the critical role of the arts in a healthy community, and for healthy individuals. Art is not an add-on or a bonus or something to do if you can get to it. It’s a key part of quality of life, which is what we are all about.”

Todd Hanson, Vice President for Donor Relations and Programs, is a believer as well. “Prior to this initiative, we would not have said much about the importance of the arts when talking with donors. Now, when a donor wants to know about community needs, we add arts to the mix, and we do it without detracting from any other area of community need.”

A fragmented arts scene

Orange County is home to nearly 500 arts organizations. Fewer than 20 are big players with more than $1 million in revenue; well over 400 are small organizations with revenue of less than $99,000. Arts venues, like the population, are dispersed throughout this urban county. A centralized art district does not exist, so attracting audiences is a challenge, and there is limited awareness of Orange County’s rich arts programming and offerings.

The community foundation saw the need to know more about the arts landscape before attempting to engage donors in this arena. It took action, conducting research with Arts Orange County to better understand local attitudes.

Opening eyes

Released in 2006, the research report made it clear that Orange County residents care about the arts:

• Sixty-four percent of residents (and/or their immediate family members) actively create or participate in the arts.
• Seventy-five percent of local arts organizations were founded in the last 35 years.
• Ninety-eight percent of residents agree that arts are critical for the education and development of children.

“This research sent us in a whole different direction,” says Shelley Hoss. The community foundation had begun with an assumption that it would be building a case for more arts giving among its traditional donor base. The effect of the research was revolutionary, Shelley reports. “It caused us to see that our work is about bringing arts to all the people of Orange County. It’s about drawing the entire spectrum of our community into a pipeline to generate support for arts.”

Going deep

This new view led to strategies for building infrastructure that could support this pipeline. Key ingredients include:

• A working partnership with Arts Orange County, and an ongoing commitment to help this local arts council become stronger and more sustainable
• An increased grantmaking emphasis, with a record level of $2.4 million in arts support in 2007
• Intentional support for small arts nonprofits, including using Irvine regranting funds to supply $250,000 across 25 organizations, and launching a series of customized technical assistance workshops designed to help these organizations move forward in a sustainable way.

More depth will be added in a next stage of work, featuring continuing partnership with Arts Orange County to:

• Engage local donors and raise a $1.2 million endowment for local arts programs
• Support local arts organizations’ efforts to build endowments
• Focus on youth, including grants and support for arts education in all schools across the county
• Launching a comprehensive website promoting Orange County arts events, venues, and organizations

It’s all part of a new awareness. According to Shelley, “Impact in arts lies largely with the arts organizations themselves. Their ability to plan, market, attract audience, deliver quality experiences… that’s what makes this sector go.”

Transformative power

Early into its learning curve, the community foundation saw the possibilities for impact. “We talked about it with lots of people and heard about these ideas from enough local arts organizations to see that all kinds of things were doable, if someone could get the ball rolling,” says Shelley. “There was plenty of pent-up demand, and we could help match it with supply.

“Our role of neutral convener really came to bear here. We were positioned nicely to say things other people were thinking, and to get groups talking who wouldn’t normally talk to each other.”

The community foundation has benefited enormously from this process. For example, Shelley and Todd now have regular contact and “warm, collegial relationships” with virtually all leaders of the 10 major arts organizations in the county; just three years ago they were zero for 10 in this arena. They also report a huge transformation in how the arts community views the community foundation. At the beginning, attitudes “probably ranged from being curious to thinking of us as a competitor,” says Shelley. Today the perception has completely shifted. The community foundation is seen as having a strong commitment to arts, and to having an impact for all arts organizations from small and new to big and mature.

Broader value

“The learning from this is transferable to other things we are doing,” says Todd Hanson. Of particular relevance is the community foundation’s broad interest in growing more field-of-interest funds, with appreciation that work building an arts endowment will set the stage for expansion to other program areas.

Shelley adds that, “Experience with arts has forced us to think about our messaging relative to other nonprofits. It affects how we describe the community foundation to grantees as well as to other nonprofits that we are not funding. Several of them are bigger than us, yet we can show how we add value to their work.”

“Working with the Orange County Community Foundation to cultivate local donor interest has helped to increase our long-term viability,” said Lawrence Rosenberg, Founder and Co-director of Anaheim Ballet, which promotes the practice of ballet among diverse youth in Orange County. “We’re proud of the work we do to introduce more than 30,000 students annually to ballet and performance art through community outreach, education, professional concerts and our online video series. Thanks to this help from the Orange County Community Foundation, we have a greater ability to raise awareness and positively impact the lives of more young people.”

Arts have been good for Orange County Community Foundation. And for Shelley’s family, “My husband and I are doing things in arts that never would have happened before this initiative. Our son was introduced to the symphony at age 2, and is in dance at age 4. It’s a whole new way of looking at life.”

Orange County Community Foundation is a participant in Communities Advancing the Arts, a major funding initiative of The James Irvine Foundation.

Filed under: Featured foundations, Getting organized