Group to Salute O.C. Businesses for Cultural Role : Arts Support: Designed neither to raise, distribute nor donate funds, the committee acts as a clearinghouse that promotes ‘partnerships’ with arts groups.

It’s that time of year again.

On Sunday, many of the area’s top business leaders will once again don three-piece suits and cocktail attire to attend the Orange County Business Committee for the Arts’ annual awards ceremony.

The ceremony recognizing “outstanding” arts support by local businesses routinely makes society, arts and business news. It is practically synonymous with the committee itself. It will be followed, as is tradition, by an elaborate supper at the Ritz restaurant in Newport Beach.

Ask almost anyone who knows about the 9-year-old nonprofit organization for a definition, and the person will usually talk of the awards fete, at which corporations are recognized for volunteering hours and hours of technical aid or donating large amounts of money.

The annual ceremony and dinner, underwritten by several corporations, is also a fund-raiser. Last year, it contributed about $38,000 to the committee’s $131,816 expense budget, said committee executive director Betty R. Moss, who is expecting 320 for Sunday’s ceremony and $175-per-plate repast of crab, shrimp and lobster salad, roast duck and white-chocolate ice cream.

But besides the high-profile affair, just what does the Orange County Business Committee for the Arts do?

A satisfactory answer appears to elude many members of the local arts community.

“I’m not really certain of the intent of the business committee,” John H. Rhynerson, chairman of the Master Chorale of Orange County, said recently.

While the chorale won an Arts Award at the committee’s 1985 ceremony, he said, “I haven’t been in contact (with the committee) in the last couple of years, other than getting invited to their banquets.”

Moss, the committee’s founding executive director, certainly can explain its guiding mission: “Our whole purpose is to encourage businesses to support the arts” with service or cash contributions, she said recently.

Designed neither to raise, distribute nor donate funds, the committee acts more as a clearinghouse. “The heart of what we do, more than anything else is, is to form partnerships between arts organizations and our members,” Moss said.

One of 12 branches of the national Business Committee for the Arts Inc., the committee forms these partnerships by matching up its members--120 corporations whose annual dues range from $250 to $5,000, depending on their size--with nonprofit arts groups seeking funds, board members, pro bono accounting or legal expertise and a range of other needs.

“Arts organizations are in touch with me all the time,” Moss said. “They will call and say, ‘We need someone on our board,’ or ‘We just had some city funds taken away, can you help?’ Then I call (committee) members and see if they can indeed help.”

Conversely, sometimes corporate members who want to become involved with a specific art form call up asking for a referral. Moss, whose staff consists of herself and a secretary, keeps a file of most of 200 county arts groups for this and other purposes.

The committee recently had a hand in helping the St. Joseph Ballet Company, which provides dance instruction for disadvantaged, inner-city youths, move from an overcrowded church basement into bigger, better quarters in Santa Ana’s Fiesta Marketplace.

Moss arranged breakfast for herself, her friend, Daniel Guggenheim, and the St. Joseph founder and artistic director, Beth Burns. The result: a $55,000 grant from the New York-based Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Foundation used to complete St. Joseph’s shiny new facility.

“It was Betty’s intimate knowledge of our mission and our program over the years that I think first interested (Daniel Guggenheim) in finding out more about our program and seeing what a wonderful match it is with the Guggenheim Foundation,” Burns said.

When Gov. George Deukmejian went looking for a county resident to name to the California Arts Council, it was the committee that initially suggested Harvey Stearn, one of its members, Moss said, and encouraged 5th District Orange County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley and other local leaders to write letters recommending him.

Moss sent Stearn’s name to Sacramento, said an assistant to Stearn, who was then president of Mission Viejo Co.’s California division. He won the appointment in 1984 and was subsequently council chairman.

“Many times (financial) contributions are made, and we are behind the scenes in that,” Moss added. “The arts organization may not even know we are there.”

Founded in 1981 by Fluor Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David S. Tappan Jr., Moss and other leading area businessmen, the committee has also helped place business executives on the boards of several arts groups. It is working to add James Martin, vice president of Security Pacific National Bank, to the board of directors of Stop-Gap theater troupe in Santa Ana, for instance, Moss said.

“Betty has come out to see what Stop-Gap is doing, she’s attended our events so she could become an advocate for our programs,” said Don Laffoon, Stop-Gap’s executive director.

Despite the increasing importance of minority representation on arts boards--the California Arts Council greatly reduced a grant to South Coast Repertory in part because it has too few minority board members--Moss said the committee does nothing to help arts groups increase the number of minorities on their boards.

Board makeup should be decided by each organization and is not something the committee should “in any way influence,” Moss said.

Not every local group has been helped by the business committee.

“They have contacted us on a couple of occasions, but nothing ever really worked out,” said Judith Peterson, director of Fullerton’s Muckenthaler Cultural Center.

The committee also ceased sponsoring seminars that, for example, brought together arts and business professionals. That is something better left to an arts service agency, such as a countywide council being developed, Moss said.

The committee, however, has contributed significantly to vigorous local corporate support of the arts--exemplified by the $73-million Orange County Performing Arts Center, funded entirely by private sources, individuals and corporations--said Judith A. Jedlicka, president of the committee’s New York-based national headquarters.

Developer C. J. Segerstrom & Sons--whose managing partner, Henry T. Segerstrom, is a committee member and past chairman--has been honored several times at its annual awards ceremony for, among other things, millions of dollars in cash and five acres of land that he and his family have given to the Center.

In the last seven years, the committee has recognized firms small and large for arts support, among them the Fluor Corp., the Irvine Co. and the Mission Viejo Co.

An Arts Award, acknowledging arts organizations’ “achievement in developing partnerships with businesses,” is also given each year. The award has “sporadically” been accompanied by a grant of $500 to $1,500--whenever a member corporation can be found to donate the cash, Moss said.

Some believe that the award--even without money attached--is an important gesture.

“The recognition factor for us was much greater than the cash award,” said Catherine M. Michaels, director of the Children’s Museum at La Habra, which won $1,500 in 1988. “That alone helps us get into corporations to apply for other grants.”

Moss, however, said the chief focus of the evening’s celebration is on businesses, not arts groups, and that some business committee branches give no such awards at all. (This contributed to the local committee’s decision to give one award annually, instead of two after its first two years.)

“I am always happy to get whatever a business would like to give” for an Arts Award grant, Moss said.

She added that the local affiliate’s 36-member board has discussed eliminating the award altogether, a suggestion she opposes.

“I would hope we would keep the Arts Award in there, even though (the event) is not an arts-award program. It is primarily to honor businesses. These fellows need to be recognized.”

“When we started the business committee eight years ago, (corporate) giving in the community was not at the level it is today,” added Moss, 58, who was host for a nighttime TV talk show in Chicago before moving to the county in 1957. She volunteered with various organizations until she began to work for the committee in 1981.

“It’s a great job,” she said. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to make a difference in a community that, compared to cities like San Francisco or Boston, is in its infancy stage in the arts, a community that is laying the foundation for future generations.”

PAST BUSINESS COMMITTEE AWARD WINNERS Past Arts Award winners of the Orange County Business Committee for the Arts:

1982: South Coast Repertory and Stop-Gap Theatre. No grant.

1983: Laguna Art Museum and South Coast Repertory. Grant: $1,000.

1984: Orange County Philharmonic Society. No grant.

1985: Master Chorale of Orange County. No grant.

1986: St. Joseph Ballet Company and school. Grant: $500.

1987: Stop-Gap Theatre Company. Grant: $1,000.

1988: Children’s Museum at La Habra. Grant: $1,500.