The pandemic has forced nonprofits and small businesses alike to find creative ways to stay afloat. For businesses, that could look like upping online sales while physical doors remain closed, or bringing services outdoors. But for organizations and foundations, adapting to pandemic limitations has been uniquely challenging—especially with budgets that depend more on fundraising events than selling goods and services.
For The Wildling Museum in Solvang, the cancellation of its annual spring barbecue earlier this year will leave a large gap in the art institution’s budget.
“It’s been quite a tradition for The Wildling, and it’s been our primary fundraiser for most of the years that we’ve been around,” Executive Director Stacey Otte-Demangate told the Sun. “It’s something we really count on to bring in a good portion of our revenue for the year. This year, probably about 15 percent of our revenue was projected to come from that.”
After being forced to cancel the spring event, the museum hoped that its annual October brunch fundraiser could help make up for some of the losses. But as autumn nears and the virus is showing no signs of letting up, Otte-Demangate said the museum will have to change gears entirely.
“We actually ended up having to cancel three events this year, which all together would have been 18 percent of our budget. Now we’re trying to figure out if we can recoup that,” she said. “We’re pivoting to a virtual event on Oct. 16, so a completely online fundraiser, to still try and celebrate our 20th anniversary.”
Otte-Demangate said she expects The Wildling “to squeak through this year relatively whole,” thanks to sponsors, a forgivable loan from the Paycheck Protection Program, and a small reserve that the museum has worked hard to build up in recent years.
But she added that, for many arts and culture organizations, having a safety net to fall back on is not a given.
“There are many smaller groups that are very year-to-year in how they survive and how they make their money. This could easily be, if not their end now, certainly a major wake-up call,” she said. “For us a few years ago, we would not be telling such a satisfying story.”
Stephanie Hassett, finance director of the Ian M. Hassett Foundation and an executive board member of the Santa Maria Arts Council, said that canceled fundraisers have posed similar challenges for the organizations she’s involved with.
The foundation honors the memory of Hassett’s son, Ian, an artist and musician who lost his battle with cancer at 19 years old. Each year, the Ian M. Hassett Foundation hosts a fundraiser to support its programming. Among the foundation’s impactful programs are a mobile art trailer with free supplies for students, a gallery show, arts classes for adults with disabilities, and an art scholarship.
“Being a small organization, we basically just had one big fundraiser a year. We’re reliant on that to fund our programs,” Hassett told the Sun. “So not being able to have that fundraiser has obviously impacted the programming, and because of COVID, the programming has come to a grinding halt.”
Luckily, as a small organization, Hassett said the foundation was still able to give out its annual $1,000 art scholarship. But for the Santa Maria Arts Council, where Hassett serves on the board, canceling its annual Grant Showcase was acutely felt.
“The Grant Showcase has been going on since 1972, and they give out between $10,000 and $13,000 in grants every year to students,” Hassett said. “We normally would hold that in May, and that had to stop for the first time since 1972. So that’s a big impact, and the organization has not been able to give out any grants this year.”
Hassett said the difficulties that arts and culture organizations are facing during the pandemic underscore a larger societal issue of how the sector is valued.
“I think traditionally, arts and culture organizations have been placed on the back burner,” Hassett said. “I think we take them for granted, and we don’t notice they’re gone until they’re gone.”
But arts organizations aren’t the only ones feeling the severe blow of canceled events. The Lompoc Hospital District Foundation, which supports Lompoc Valley Medical Center, was forced to cancel its annual Flower Valley Golf Classic and Colorthon 5K run.
“We were well into planning it. We had already collected about $20,000 in sponsors,” foundation President Alice Milligan told the Sun of the golf tournament. “This week we’re sending notices out to the sponsors saying that we’ll carry them over to next year, or if they want a refund they’ll let us know.”
Milligan said the foundation expected to bring in $80,000 from its now-canceled event.
“The golf tournament is our major fundraiser, and each year we come up with a project to utilize the funds for the hospital,” Milligan said. “This year the project was purchasing eight patient monitoring systems for the Lompoc Valley Medical Center, for the post-anesthesia care unit. We won’t have the money for that.”
While in an ideal world hospitals wouldn’t need to rely on fundraising to pursue vital projects, Milligan said that the foundation also serves an important role in the community.
“We don’t just fundraise for equipment and programs, we also have seminars,” Milligan said. “It gets the community more educated in terms of what the hospital provides. So irrespective of what has happened or will happen, I think there will always be a foundation.”
For The Wildling Museum, finding unique ways to maintain community involvement has been one of the brighter points of the pandemic. Otte-Demangate said the museum now hosts regular Zoom webinars, with some guests even tuning in from out of town. The museum is mulling whether to continue these programs for the long term, even after their physical doors open again.
Hassett hopes the pandemic will encourage people to consider supporting the services they may have previously taken for granted.
“These organizations are having to survive during this shutdown in order to bring back the programming that people have become accustomed to, when we’re all able to get out again,” she said. “Any support people can offer, whatever their organization of choice is, send in whatever you can to help them through this time.”
Reach Staff Writer Malea Martin at mmartin@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 3-10, 2020.