Alms to the Ensembles

With public funding of the arts little more than a memory these days, small private foundations have suddenly become heavy hitters in the game of grants making. These modern-day Medicis are playing an increasingly important role in determining not only what kinds of art get made and what audiences see, but even what groups survive.

A case in point is the Pasadena-based Flintridge Foundation, whose philanthropy has a significant impact on theater in Los Angeles. The 11-year-old foundation--which also has programs in the visual arts, conservation and community services--supports many L.A.-based stage ensembles, including the Actors’ Gang, About Productions, Cornerstone Theater and Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company.

Flintridge has given more than $1.5 million to theater in California, Oregon and Washington since its 1986 inception, including more than $650,000 to groups in L.A. alone.

But Flintridge isn’t giving out this money to just any kind of theater. The foundation is very specific about what types of groups it wants to support, targeting only small to mid-size collaborative ensembles with proven track records. And that focus, combined with a hands-on approach, is central to a strategy that has so far worked well.

The Flintridge approach, in fact, might also serve as a game plan for other small foundations now entering the field of arts funding to follow.

At its heart is a fundamental belief in the artistic process. “It really is about believing in the work,” explains senior program officer Pam Gregg, seated in a conference room in the foundation’s sedate-yet-art-adorned offices. “That’s what drives everything we do. It always comes back to the artists that we’re supporting and the work that they’re creating.”

“It’s an investment in artists and the artistic process, and not the product,” adds vice president and fine arts committee chair Alex Moseley. “We’re so used to [seeing foundations] investing in the product. We get so much art product put out all the time, and there’s so much money attached to it, that it’s nice to be able to just help the people who are on the ground doing it.”

The Flintridge Foundation was launched in 1984 with $12 million from Moseley’s parents: Francis, an inventor and entrepreneur who founded two manufacturing companies in California, and Louisa Moseley, an artist. Alex Moseley is one of four children on the foundation’s founding board of trustees.

The original mandate was so broad, says Moseley, “you could have funded anything in the world.” But the particular interests of the family and others on the board--several of whom are working artists themselves--helped to narrow the focus by the time the first grants were given out in 1986.

Through investments, the original $12-million endowment has now grown to $26 million, and Flintridge will be giving away about $1.5 million in grants in 1998, including approximately $297,000 split between 15 to 20 theaters, with an average grant size of $15,000 to $20,000.

That may not sound like much in the world of philanthropy, but it can mean the difference between staying afloat and going under for a small-theater group. And that’s one reason why Flintridge has specialized in the kinds of groups it does: It wants to see where its money goes.

“Partly our focus was influenced by our size,” says Moseley. “We wanted to be able to give money that was going to have an effect, and it isn’t going to have an effect if we give to some huge organization [where] $15,000 will go to paper supplies. We really wanted to be able to have the enthusiasm of the board involved.”

In this regard, Flintridge is right in step with a major recent trend in American philanthropy toward giving to smaller organizations. But such an approach also happens to be compatible with the nature of the theatrical beast that Flintridge wants to fund.

Collective ensembles, almost by definition, tend to be small --and barely surviving. “It’s a structural style that doesn’t work very big, because it’s absolutely collaborative,” says Moseley. “But it’s so artistically fertile. It’s wonderful to hear how they work together as people and how they make art out of this intense relationship.”

Nor do these kinds of groups have much hope without help. “Ensembles are in some ways a dying breed, or at least struggling,” says Gregg. “It takes a long time to make work in that way, in a less hierarchical process. A number of our theaters produce only a couple of pieces a year.

“The decision to fund ensembles is about trying to allow this mode of working to survive. Overall, as the funding landscape becomes more bleak, I think that artists will find ensembles are a place of refuge. I think that ensembles will always survive, and that they will be a haven for the imagination of the artists involved.”

The right theatrical ideology, however, is not enough. Flintridge wants to back groups that have proven not only their artistic mettle, but also that they’re in it for the long run.

Consequently, there’s a courtship process that typically lasts from nine months to a year before any grant is actually awarded. During this time, the foundation gets to know not only a company’s work and dreams, but also how it handles its financial affairs.

Theater groups don’t come to Flintridge--the foundation finds them. “It starts with staff learning about a group by seeing as much theater as possible, and we actually have a board that’s been very active in that,” says Gregg. “A number of organizations have complimented the foundation on the fact that board members come to see the work. They find that that’s actually rare.”

After several Flintridge staff and board members have agreed on a group, there’s a site visit. And only then is the ensemble invited to submit a proposal.

The courtship is long, in part, because Flintridge wants the relationship to last. “Once they get through this, then a relationship can build and you can be more flexible in the kind of funding that you give because they have gone through this filtering for artistic quality and commitment,” says Moseley. “It eventually benefits both the organization and us.

Most of Flintridge’s theater grants have gone--as is typical in this field--toward the support of particular new plays or productions. The 1997 grants, for example, backed such works as Cornerstone’s “Malliere,” About Productions’ “Memory Rites,” L.A. Women’s Shakespeare Co.’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” the Actors’ Gang’s “Bat Boy: The Musical” and more, including Theatre of NOTE’s festival of new work and a commission from Highways to the Sacred Naked Nature Girls.

Yet Flintridge also looks for other ways in which it can support the company’s work, be it by paying for a part-time administrator or providing seed money for a retirement fund.

Flintridge is further committed to supporting development of new works, from the ground up. “The foundation wants to be in on a project at the beginning,” Gregg says. “They may not know what the [new] project is. But they know they want to work through their [established] process of arriving at the work. So we fund that period of time, for them to develop a new work.

“It’s more of a risk for funders to support something that cannot necessarily be described on paper,” she continues. “But it represents [our] belief in supporting the creative process of the artist.”

And that, perhaps, is the essential lesson of Flintridge’s arts funding experience. Says Gregg: “I would encourage other funders to remember the artists and why they’re doing the funding in the first place, to consider taking those risks with work at the beginning stage.”