ARTS GROUPS FIND DONORS HAVE A LIMIT

By ALLAN JALON

Aug. 21, 1987 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

At 70, Harold Birnkrant is a wealthy, retired businessman who expresses an artistic streak by playing the clarinet--and writing checks for symphonies, theaters and museums.

He and his wife, Mimi, who live on Lido Isle, happily gave $50,000 toward the Orange County Performing Arts Center, as well as contributions to other local institutions.

Now, however, they say they are feeling overwhelmed by ever-increasing requests for money from myriad arts organizations in the county.

“We need a rest,” said Birnkrant, founder of an Anaheim-based linen supply company. “We get the letters asking for money all the time now. It’s very competitive among all the local arts groups. . . . The Laguna Art Museum had a drive, and the Newport Harbor Art Museum wants to start a new campaign, and we keep hearing about the Center and its deficit. . . . I think we will get more selective about where we put our money.”

The Birnkrants are not alone, according to corporate accountants and fund-raisers for Orange County arts groups. They said many major arts donors are increasingly hearing the pitch from so many competing groups that they are becoming more conservative about how much they give.

Local arts groups are seeking ever-larger amounts of money to fuel an explosive arts boom, in part spawned by the opening of the $70.7-million Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa, built through the largess of the private sector. Some groups plan to increase their 1987-88 operating budgets by up to a third over this past season.

Leaders of the county’s leading arts groups said they have planned budget increases of up to 35% and are seeking at least $9 million in donated operating funds for 1987-88, contrasted with about $7 million in 1986-87. While officials with local arts institutions said they are still receiving amounts sufficient to their needs, several said that soliciting the money is harder than before. They said they regard comments such as those of the Birnkrants as a sign that cultural giving will not keep pace with cultural ambitions.

“I used to get a hit (a donation) with one out of every three people I asked,” said Donald Shaw, a member of the Center’s executive committee and one of its leading fund-raisers. “Now, it’s one out of every five. It’s definitely getting harder.”

Many said the quest for the arts dollar is rapidly becoming more competitive and has led local theatrical companies, museums, orchestras, dance troupes and host of other groups, including the Center itself, to increase development staffs and become more aggressive in seeking donors.

“Anybody who tells you it isn’t a highly competitive situation out there right now is being naive,” said Erich Vollmer, the executive director of the Orange County Philharmonic Society, which Vollmer said will probably hire its first full-time development expert within the coming year.

“Everybody is having to become more professional and more effective about how they go after money.”

However, Vollmer said that he believes Orange County arts patrons will donate to groups that market themselves aggressively.

“It’s important to have a good artistic product, which I think we do,” he said.

Nationally, donations to the arts is expected to slack off, in part because of revisions in tax laws and changes in corporate America, said officials with several major arts umbrella groups.

Barbara Janowitz, director of management services for the Theater Communications Group, a Washington-based service organization for U.S. nonprofit theaters, said that dollar amounts may increase in the coming year but that she expects a “slowdown in the rate of growth.”

Janowitz predicted that the large number of recent corporate mergers and takeovers will shrink the number of business dollars for the arts. She added that the loss of the federal charitable tax-deduction for non-itemizers may threaten individual gifts.

“The outlook is not rosy,” agreed Lee Kessler, deputy director of the American Arts Alliance, a Washington, D.C., group that lobbies Congress on behalf of 350 major U.S. arts institutions.

Managing partners of several major accounting firms represented in Orange County said their clients are indeed showing what one called “a greater hesitancy” about giving to the arts.

While they said federal tax reform may be one reason, accountants stressed that the major cause is a frustration that arts fund-raising did not let up after the Center’s opening, but stepped up.

“The same story is being echoed by most of our corporate clients and by individuals--that the demand is outstripping the availability of funds,” said Tom Testman, managing partner of Ernst & Whinney’s Orange County regional office in Irvine.

Most companies queried about charitable contributions declined to discuss specific figures. However, Deloitte Haskins & Sells, which gave $100,000 to the Center previously, will be cutting back on donations, said C. Stephen Mansfield, managing partner in charge for Deloitte Haskins & Sells’s office in Costa Mesa. In the fiscal 1981, the firm donated $5,000 to $10,000 to “two or three” local arts groups. In 1982, it gave $100,000 to the Center, in $20,000 installments over five years. In each of those years, it gave another $10,000 to other groups.

In the next 12 months, the firm will spread about $15,000 among five or six groups--including Newport Harbor Art Museum, Opera Pacific and South Coast Repertory Theatre, Mansfield said.

“There is no doubt that we are spreading it thinner than before,” he said.

The trend toward diminished donations could mean serious problems for Orange County arts institutions, according to the chairman of the California Arts Council, Harvey Stearn.

A developer who sat on the Center’s board of directors until he resigned in May, Stearn warned that the county’s cultural boom could lead to a financial crisis similar to that faced by the San Diego Symphony in 1986: It grew too fast and overestimated its public support.

“I think there is a very real concern,” said Stearn, a South Laguna resident who resigned from the Center’s board to devote more time to the state council.

“There is no question about (the San Diego comparison) with the expansion plans occuring simultaneously and the question of whether there is enough support for it all,” added Stearn, who is president of the Mission Viejo Co. California division.

Wesley O. Brustad, the San Diego Symphony’s executive director, who also tracks the Orange County arts scene, said there are similarities between the two communities:

“They are both affluent and growing fast. But it is a false illusion to think that a community’s capacity to give equals a willingness (to give).”

David Emmes, South Coast Repertory’s producing artistic director, agreed with Stearn in principle: “There is a lot of competition out there, but this county is growing quickly, and it is very affluent. We believe there is reason to be hopeful our goals will be met.”

While Stearn and others cited various construction projects that will require donations from local arts patrons in the near future, they pointed out that higher costs do not end with the opening of a new facility. Physical expansion of a museum or theater usually prompts higher operating costs.

Since the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach opened its addition last September, its budget has risen 36% from $550,000 for the 1985-1986 fiscal year to $750,000 for 1986-1987, larger by far than any previous annual increase. To meet increased costs, the museum has increased the portion of its budget devoted to development from 5% to 25% in the last two years.

Following the recent resignation of its development director, the museum is looking for a replacement.

Officials for the Newport Harbor Art Museum would not speculate on how much operating costs would rise after an expansion into a proposed new $20 million building in Newport Center. But they said increases would be substantial.

Not surprisingly, competition for the arts dollar among Orange County arts groups is becoming increasingly intense.

“We’re all trying to beat each other with the look of our brochures, with personal contacts with people we know, with the number of times we contact people,” said Mary Lyons, a former chairwoman of the Pacific Chorale who remains involved in fund-raising for the choral group.

Lyons said the chorale soon will hire a professional fund-raiser in the next few months to replace a volunteer who has done the job in years past.

The Orange County Philharmonic Society’s Erich Vollmer said his organization is trying to raise money among new groups of potential donors, and trying new methods of fund-raising, including breakfast meetings with Orange County business executives. The society also expects to hire a fund-raising specialist within the year.

Yet the competition has not precluded instances of cooperation. Vollmer recently asked Pacific Chorale officials to join the Philharmonic Society in a fund-raising fashion show. The two organizations split the $20,000 proceeds of the event held June 23 at Neiman-Marcus in Newport Beach, Vollmer said.

“I think it’s safe to say that kind of joint event has not been done by two performing arts groups in the county,” Vollmer said. “It’s clearly a response to a growing realization that we have to be more creative about fund-raising than before.”

The Center has tried to meet its need to raise millions annually in operating capital by restructuring its volunteer fund-raising organization, streamlining it to give prominence and primary responsibility to proven fund-raisers.

The Center’s chief patron, developer Henry T. Segerstrom, who developed South Coast Plaza and whose family donated five acres of land for the Center, plus $6 million, was named the new chief executive officer in April.

At the time, Center president Thomas R. Kendrick said the move was intended to show the board’s seriousness about fund raising in the face of the Center’s projected annual operating deficit and construction debt.

(Kendrick and Center development director Thomas R. Pascoe Jr. declined comment on the subject of fund raising, saying they preferred to let volunteers speak for the Center. Segerstrom, the chief spokesman for the volunteers, did not respond to requests for interviews.)

Despite warnings, such as Stearn’s, that growth plans may outpace the generousity of past contributors, some local arts managers remain optimistic that new donors will be found to replace those whose support wanes.

“My feeling is that are many sources of funds in this county that have not been tapped,” said Kevin Consey, director of the Newport Harbor Art Museum. “My theory is that people in this county have the right money and the right generosity of spirit and, when the right project comes along, they will give the money.”

One key Center fund-raiser said he believes that Orange County arts groups may have to coordinate their fund raising--perhaps even forming a new umbrella group to do it.

Donald Shaw, who also sits on its executive committee, said he worries about donor burnout: “You do have a tendency to go back to the same well every time. When you get beyond the circle of your acquaintances, you’re not comfortable talking to people.”

The Irvine Co., long one of the county’s most generous corporate givers, recently “shifted the priorities” away from local performing groups. While it has promised a valuable 10-acre parcel of land for a new building to house the Newport Harbor Art Museum, company officials have told the Pacific Chorale and the Orange County Philharmonic Society to expect smaller grants this year than before.

“This community took it as a challenge to raise money for the Center,” said Tom Stephenson, the Irvine Co.’s director of public relations. “But I don’t think anybody was quite prepared to support the growth that has followed, the degree of the other groups’ needs.”

The following numbers represent total budget amounts. Organizations hope to raise 10-50% of their budgets from private donors with the rest coming from box office revenues, public grants and other sources.

OC PERFORMING ARTS CENTER:

1982: Did not exist in current form.

1987: $11.5 million

GROVE THEATER COMPANY:

1982-1983: $250,000

1987-1988: $450,000

PACIFIC CHORALE:

1982-1983: $136,000.

1987-1988: $375,000-$400,000

OC PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY

1982-1983: $532,600

1987-1988: $1.7 million