Grant Park Concerts Society Scrambles for Funds
To cover operating expenses for the Grant Park Music Festival’s upcoming season, the Chicago Park District has asked the Grant Park Concerts Society to come up with about three times the amount it did last year. It’s mostly Park District money that pays for the annual summer season of free orchestra concerts and other performances; the 16-year-old Grant Park Concerts Society works with the Park District to raise additional funds–primarily from corporations, philanthropic foundations, and individual contributions. Some GPCS staffers are worried that if they can’t come up with the money, the Park District will cut its ties with the not-for-profit organization.
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Last summer the Park District put $1.7 million toward the festival; the Grant Park Concerts Society contributed $131,878 in direct operating support out of a total budget of approximately $600,000. The remaining funds went toward other programs, including an outreach program to bring schoolchildren to Grant Park concerts, a public relations, advertising, and audience development campaign, and out-of-town advertising, plus administrative expenses (the group’s three employees work out of donated space at the Congress Hotel).
Who Saved the Spring Festival of Dance?
In published reports last week much was made of the so-called rescue of the Spring Festival of Dance by Chicago Music and Dance Theater Inc., the newly formed board that will oversee planning and fund-raising for a new midsize theater at Cityfront Center. But some of the credit goes to Civic Stages Chicago, the organization that coordinated and presented the annual showcase of dance companies in past years. Civic Stages was dissolved last June when Lyric Opera of Chicago bought the Civic Opera House and Civic Theatre. But before it ceased to exist it handed over some $230,000 to the Chicago Community Trust, the foundation that spearheaded the drive for the new theater. Now the money has quietly gone into the budget for next spring’s dance festival, slated for April 6 through May 22 at the Shubert Theatre, the Harold Washington Library Center, and Steppenwolf.
