The Boston Ballet has received a total of $135,000 from the Cultural Facilities Fund. One award for $45,000 went toward repairing the roof of its headquarters and the dancers’ practice space and to address additional weatherization issues.
Mary Moore
Reporter- Boston Business Journal
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As tourists flock to cultural sites in Greater Boston to celebrate the 4th of July, few are thinking about how these landmarks are finding the money to update their hundreds-year-old facilities and facades.
Yet, when the tourists go home, the roofs still need fixing, lobbies need rehabbing and new elevators need to be installed. And that’s where the state’s Cultural Facilities Fund comes in.
Since 2007, when the fund was created, the state has distributed $70 million in grants to cultural nonprofits in Boston. In general, these are not sexy projects. They are the maintenance, repairs and updates that nonprofit organizations typically have difficulty paying for through normal philanthropic fundraising.
Some of the grants have gone toward new construction, such as the Institute of Contemporary Art, or to help pay for the addition of new wings, including at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts.
For the most recent round of Cultural Facilities Fund money, which totaled $15 million for 2014, 162 cultural facilities statewide applied for money to pay for capital projects and 48 applied for smaller grants to help plan out future projects.
Of the capital grant applications in this recent round, roughly half – or 81 – received money from the Cultural Facilities Fund. All of the organizations that applied for planning grant funding received it.
The House and Senate are both supporting a proposal to spend $50 million again in the Cultural Facilities Fund over the next five years.
Here’s a look at Cultural Facilities Fund-backed renovations, expansion and new construction in the Greater Boston area since 2007.
Non-Profits, Philanthropy, Higher Education