Arts & Science Council will slash grants in half if it can’t raise millions soon

For months, leaders of the Arts & Science Council warned that huge cuts would come to Mecklenburg County’s arts sector if voters rejected a sales tax referendum last November.

The sales tax hike would have injected $22.5 million annually into the local arts sector, but it was easily defeated. On Thursday, the ASC’s prediction about dire cuts appeared to be coming true.

ASC President Jeep Bryant said the organization needs to raise $5 million by June to avoid a 50% cut in operating grant money it gives to 33 arts organizations. Those grants make up an average of 10% of those groups’ budgets, although the percentage varies based on the sizes of the organizations.

Some of the county’s most prominent arts groups receive ASC funding, including Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, Charlotte Ballet, Charlotte Symphony and the Carolina Raptor Center. Other funding recipients include smaller groups like Mint Hill Arts and Davidson Community Players.

Much of the budget pain is due to this: For the past two years, the ASC has tapped heavily into its endowments to sustain its operating grants to arts groups. That’s no longer possible, Bryant said.

That, coupled with a projected 15% drop in workplace giving this fiscal year, means the ASC must raise $5 million to keep the operating grant funding pool flat.

This fiscal year, the ASC is doling out nearly $6 million in operating grants to arts groups. That amount would be cut to $3 million if more money isn’t raised. The other $2 million it needs is for other ASC operations, like investments in neighborhood arts programs, grants to individual artists and the maintenance of the Charlotte Culture Guide, an online site that informs the community about art and culture events.

The ASC also gets taxpayer funding. The city of Charlotte contributes $3.2 million in unrestricted funds, and the county puts in around $2 million for programs including the Studio 345 after-school program and arts outreach efforts.

Seeking revenue

Bryant and ASC Board Chair Valecia McDowell said they’re appealing to public and private sources for help. Their goal is not solely raising funds to sustain them for next year but to find a way to fund the arts sector in a stable way for years to come.

“Actions have consequences,” McDowell said Thursday. “We understand where the community came out on the tax, and we respect that, but we are ... very optimistic because the community also said we believe in the sector and we want to see it funded.

“We’re going to work to try to ... mitigate the impact for all of our operating support partners,” McDowell said. “We think we can do that, but we really need the full community to get behind that.”

For the Children’s Theater of Charlotte, a 50% drop in operating grant money from the ASC would mean a cut of $185,000 in its nearly $5 million budget, said Linda Reynolds, managing director for the theater group. A decade ago, the theater received $500,000 in ASC grant money.

Reynolds said she and other arts leaders knew a big cut “might be looming,” but after hearing the ASC news Thursday morning she reached out to her leadership team for ideas about making up the potential loss.

“We spend a half a million dollars of our budget every year … providing either heavily subsidized or free programming,” Reynolds said. “That expectation grows, along with the expectation to grow your revenue.”

Other changes

The ASC has to make cuts in its own operating expenses in recent months.

In early November, during the week of the failed sales tax referendum vote, it moved from its spacious offices in the Carillion Tower uptown to a temporary WeWork space on South Tryon Street. It will move to Packard Place in May, to save money on rent, McDowell and Bryant said.

More than 57% of voters had rejected the quarter-cent sales tax hike referendum. Two weeks later, the ASC cut four jobs from its staff; two vice president positions and two other staffers.

That left 30 full-time positions on staff. Bryant said the four cuts represented 15% of the annual salary budget of the ASC.

This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 3:21 PM.