Milwaukee Arts Groups Depend on Donors – but the Funding Is Harder to Find
With compounding funding challenges, are the arts in Milwaukee on a philanthropic precipice?
BY Evan Musil, Milwaukee Magazine
From the very beginning, the existence of art has depended on benefactors to support it. For most major arts organizations today, those benefactors are private foundations, corporations and individual donors, chipping in millions of dollars to cover what tickets sales and government support don’t.
The gap those private dollars fill has never been larger. Local theater, music, dance and visual arts organizations are relying more on grants and gifts, and requesting more dollars from donors to meet the need. Changes in allocation from the United Performing Arts Fund umbrella fund and a lack of state funding, previously reported by MilMag, compound this demand.
For their part, Milwaukee’s legacy foundations – with family names including Bradley, Bader, Lubar and Baumgartner – have largely stepped up to the plate, maintaining a steady level of contributions, and in some cases increasing them since the pandemic. The question is: How much longer can they keep it up?
As widespread federal cuts by the Trump administration further strain the nonprofit sector, it’s increasingly likely some foundations and philanthropists may divert funds away from the arts to prioritize food assistance, homelessness, climate change and other pressing social issues. It’s difficult to argue with. “Arts funding is seen as more discretionary,” says Brent Hazelton, executive director of Milwaukee Chamber Theatre. “[Shifting priorities] have an impact on our local philanthropic bottom line.”
The importance of the arts is not lost on local donors, hence the number of arts-focused family funds like those administered by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. But most foundations give less than $1.5 million a year, and that amount isn’t expected to grow. With rising costs and a wider field of groups in recent years, local arts groups are all pulling from the same shallow pool.
With so much competition for donors’ dollars, organizations strategize for ways to stand out. One method is with a splashy capital campaign – a big funding drive with a specific goal. Some are for massive projects, like the Rep’s theater complex or the MSO’s symphony hall. Others are a fight for survival, like the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s 2023 sustainability campaign. The focused messaging often succeeds in drawing large gifts and a flock of support.
The concern is that these campaigns suck up money that would’ve normally been spread across several groups’ operating costs. The Herzfeld Foundation gave $2.5 million and $5 million to the campaigns of the Milwaukee Public Museum and the Milwaukee Rep respectively, the latter being “the single biggest gift in our history,” Herzfeld executive director Rob Henken says. With those gifts being paid out over several years, the foundation shifted its priorities to its “bedrock” groups and introduced a smaller grant program for others. (The foundation’s annual budget is around $4 million, with 40% going to the arts and the rest toward education and civic improvements.) This has left some arts groups traditionally funded by Herzfeld with less or no funding.
“I don’t fault any group for trying,” Henken says about the rise of capital campaigns. “But the number of these campaigns is growing, and that does create challenges.”
In terms of growing sustainable support, Rep executive director Chad Bauman argues there’s strength in numbers. “You need to be building your base of smaller level supporters,” he says. “If you steward them right over time, they can end up being your pipeline for major givers in the future.”
The Museum of Wisconsin Art’s strategy for building its base has been to forgo traditional admission, opting for a “membership fee” that gives unlimited access for a year. “People do recognize the value of it,” says executive director Laurie Winters. It also allows for direct marketing and has resulted in a boost in additional giving – she says MOWA’s largest chunk of giving comes from individuals.
A strong protection against fluctuating funding challenges are endowments – restricted investment pools that earn interest income for arts groups. But Milwaukee arts organizations are underendowed compared to peer cities. Explanations range from poor planning to simply because “you have to have surplus [to save], and that only happens when income is humming,” Hazelton says.
The past few years have seen major attempts to bring endowments up to par. In March, philanthropists Joe and Ellen Checota announced $5 million challenge grants each for the endowments of the Rep, MSO and MAM. Renaissance Theaterworks launched a $3 million campaign to create an endowment for the company.
Henken says the timing could create a bottleneck. “[Everyone’s thinking] our ability to sustain ourselves is now going to be predicated on raising tens of millions of dollars to bolster our endowment,” Henken says. “It becomes a challenge when not one or two, but nine or 10 different organizations reach that conclusion.”
The chance for saviors, from new and existing sources, seems unlikely. Milwaukee’s biggest corporations – like Northwestern Mutual and Johnson Controls – typically donate to the United Performing Arts Fund or make high-profile gifts to the biggest capital campaigns.
“There was a day when corporate [arts] giving was very strong, and I started to see a decline back in 2009, when there was the first downturn in the market,” Winters says. “With the pandemic, that has lingered. There has not been a real recovery from that.”
Rich Meeusen, retired Badger Meter CEO and former UPAF board member, says “when a company hits a hard time, it’s hard to justify giving more.” Take Harley-Davidson, once a prominent donor to UPAF that, amid corporate turbulence, has cut its total charitable contributions in half since 2019.
Legacy foundations like Bader Philanthropies continue to give substantial gifts, but those pools are finite. “I think the best way to describe it is, we remain consistent,” says Bader Philanthropies grants director Bridgett Gonzalez. “We haven’t increased the funding; we haven’t decreased the funding. It doesn’t take precedence over other areas, but it remains important.”
Macro-economic factors, including tariffs, inflation and destabilizing federal funding cuts, haven’t upended the financial markets to date, but they’ve made it difficult to predict what might come next. In the face of uncertainty, most arts groups are bracing for impact. And if they weren’t building their savings then, they are now.
“These are the good years,” says Meeusen. “They may not feel like it [now], but they will.”
Find more MilMag reporting on local arts funding at milwaukeemag.com/tag/arts-funding.