The Kern Community Foundation met with local arts and culture representatives in August 2009 as it began researching the needs within the community. Photo courtesy of Kern Community Foundation

By Jennifer Baldwin

Editor’s Note: The meetings originally announced in this story have been postponed. Stay tuned for when they are rescheduled.

Arts and culture organizations in Kern County are being hit hard in this economy. But the arts are a vital organ for communities. They bring people together through creative expression, increase community pride and awareness, and are a positive outlet for education and entertainment.

For this reason, when the Kern Community Foundation applied for a $185,000 grant from The James Irvine Foundation, the local nonprofit decided to focus its funding on arts and culture in Kern County.

But despite the economic needs of arts organizations this minute, the Kern Community Foundation is taking its time to decide how best to allocate the money. It received the money last year, but has until 2011 to re-grant it.

“We wanted to do more than build somebody’s budget for a year,” said board chairwoman Judi McCarthy. “We want to develop a high-impact, high-quality grant that will increase our visibility and our capacity to cultivate new assets to support arts and culture.”

In other words, the foundation wants to not only make sure the grants they give out are sustainable, they want to see the money used in such a way that may multiply it.

Through contacting individual arts leaders and holding a community meeting, the Kern Community Foundation has so far identified three key areas it is considering funding:

• A county-wide, online-based arts and culture calendar that all organizations can participate in by submitting their events and surfacing the calendar on their websites.
• Offering a series of conferences, webinars, or other types of workshops that will provide training to arts organizations. Some topics may include leadership, marketing and outreach, strategic planning, donor development, and board development.
• Strategic mini-grants to arts and culture organizations focusing on sustainability and growth, such as audience development and participation.

“If organizations can increase audience participation, that will mean more donors and more members. That is the best way to perpetuate services,” McCarthy said.

The foundation is still seeking input from local arts organizations, and is inviting representatives to attend future meetings to learn more about the grant program and to give feedback on how the money should be allocated.

The meetings, which were originally scheduled for April 27 and May 3, have been postponed. To be notified of the future meetings, call Jan Lemucchi, program and communications officer for Kern Community Foundation, at 325-5346. For more information about KCF, visit kernfoundation.org.