For residents of the Quad Cities, the arts and culture are always near at hand.
Museums, a symphony orchestra, botanical center, live theater, art exhibitions as well as participatory experiences and festivals of all kinds create year-round experiences that enhance the lives of residents and visitors alike.
These opportunities didn’t just appear by magic or happenstance, of course. Annual costs to house, host and produce artistic and cultural events, performances and exhibitions run into the tens of millions of dollars in the Quad Cities alone.
Philanthropy plays a key role in supporting the arts and culture in our area, but what many people don’t know is that there is a single organization dedicated to ensuring a viable and sustainable arts and culture scene here in perpetuity.
Since 2007, the Quad Cities Cultural Trust (QCCT) has been working behind the scenes solely to support arts and culture in the Quad Cities area. Their mission? To champion the cultural vitality of the Region for the benefit of all its citizens by investing in the financial stability of its supported organizations.
In other words, they’re not a producer of art, stewards of a museum or hosts of an orchestra. Rather, they’re an endowment funder of organizations that do those things, and a convener that merges community development goals, economic prosperity and quality of life.
Opening Act and Impact
When QCCT was established in 2007, there were questions around the feasibility of its mission and the scope of its vision. To date, those questions have been answered in full measure.
Created by three of the largest funders in the region — The Bechtel Trusts, Hubbell-Waterman Foundation and John Deere Foundation — the only question that remains is the extent to which this now well-established organization will continue to impact the region’s cultural and economic sustainability.
The tie-in between prosperity and quality of life in a community is well-known and symbiotic: Communities in which the arts and cultural activities of all types flourish tend to be blessed with successful recruitment and retention of a skilled and educated workforce. What’s more, nonprofit arts and culture organizations in the Quad Cities are a $72 million industry, providing jobs, tax revenue and entertainment infrastructure that wouldn’t exist without them.
How It Plays Out
QCCT currently supports six legacy organizations: Putnam Museum & Science Center, Figge Art Museum, Quad City Botanical Center, Quad City Symphony Orchestra, Common Chord, and Quad City Arts. It also has a separate fund to support the Adler Theatre.
What is unique about the QCCT is that it provides unrestricted operating funds for these organizations. Unrestricted funds are hard to fundraise and receive grants for, so this support is invaluable to the organizations. There is a competitive process each year to determine how much is given to each of the six legacy organizations. There are some guidelines, including not funding more than 25% of the operating budget for any single organization, thus ensuring funds are distributed evenly across the spectrum of arts and culture providers.
The endowment that funds these organizations grows and is replenished through gifts from individuals, businesses and organizations, creating an opportunity to help ensure a permanent legacy of arts and culture in the Quad Cities. As a result, donors are forever connected to the transformational power of artistic and cultural expression to elevate the human experience and enhance the quality of life for all who live and visit here.
QCCT’s ongoing vision is to greatly expand their capacity to support their legacy partners while engaging new partners to help create an ever refreshing and sustainable arts and culture mecca in the Quad Cities.
That’s a show we would all come to see.
To learn more about the Quad Cities Cultural Trust, visit QuadCityCulturalTrust.org, or contact Executive Director Jen Lewis-Snyder at [email protected] or (563) 424-0472.