Patron Gives Orange County Arts Groups $6.6 Million

A Laguna Beach arts patron announced a gift of more than $6.6 million to five local performing arts groups Thursday, the largest cash donation to cultural organizations--outside of gifts of land and capital campaign contributions--in Orange County’s history.

William J. Gillespie, grandson and heir to the founder of the Farmer’s Insurance Group, announced unrestricted cash gifts to be sent next week to: the Orange County Performing Arts Center ($2.8 million); Pacific Chorale ($1 million); South Coast Repertory ($940,000), and the Orange County Philharmonic Society ($680,000).

Pacific Symphony will receive $1.2 million plus an unspecified amount from a previous $2-million Gillespie pledge to fund the orchestra’s music director’s chair.

Part of the gift money comes from interest on a $17-million trust that Gillespie’s mother, Edra E. Brophy, established in 1988. The fund was established to benefit UC Irvine’s College of Medicine and four of the recipient arts groups. Additional gift money comes from interest on Gillespie’s personal foundation and other investments, according to Richard A. Gadbois III, spokesman for the Gillespie family.

The trust money earmarked for the arts, $8.5 million, was supposed to be disbursed in 2008, but Gillespie “accelerated” the terms of the trust so the groups could get the cash now, Gadbois said at a news conference. He added that Gillespie, a “very private person” who did not attend the news conference, may in the near future accelerate some of UC Irvine’s $8.5-million trust disbursement.

Gillespie was concerned about the nationwide “demise of funding” for the arts, Gadbois said, citing the regional economic downturn, the county’s bankruptcy woes and recent congressional recommendations to eradicate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

“The idea is to immediately guarantee the future success of the organizations,” Gadbois said, which will use monies for operations or endowment funds, “and attract other potential donors. . . . There are no strings attached to this. This is cash coming in for immediate utilization.”

Gillespie has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to arts groups in the past decade. But Thursday’s announcement was a surprise, particularly because “this is such a large amount--in cash--and unrestricted,” said Tom Tomlinson, performing arts center president.

Nationally, contributions of $10 million to a single institution are not uncommon, said a spokeswoman from the Foundation Center, a New York-based educational organization.

But the Gillespie gifts stack up well regionally. The largest grant received by the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles’ premiere resident theater troupe, was $1.47 million. The Los Angeles Master Chorale’s biggest gift was $50,000.

The gifts are by far the largest one-time donations ever received by each institution, except for the performing arts center, which received a total of $13.2 million in cash and land from the family of developer Henry T. Segerstrom, after whom the facility’s hall is named.