Over at Minnesota Council on Foundation’s Philanthropy Potluck blog, the team has been doing an amazing job keeping with the latest in the budgetary debates, both on Capitol Hill and in state legislatures.
Last week, Chuck Peterson, MCF’s vice president for member relations, had a stirring post on the proposed cuts the National Endowment for the Arts. In the post, Chuck argues that a decrease in government funding for the arts may pose a greater risk to the ecology of arts funding that it first appears on the surface. In fact, proposed cuts to federal funding for the arts could result in an unintential decrease in private support:
Arts and culture play a significant role in our society, and NEA dollars are often a critical piece of the funding equation in supporting state and local budgets. NEA grants require at least a one-to-one match of federal funds from the private sector – on average each NEA grant leverages at least seven dollars from other state, local and private sources. As a result, the deep cuts to NEA funding could have the unintended impact of dramatically reducing private support of cultural funding.