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Dance/USA Philadelphia Branch Office to Close

December 8, 2014 Category: Uncategorized

Dance:USA

Updated: Dance/USA announced December 12 that it will receive $89,000 from the William Penn Foundation for the transition and closure of Dance/USA Philadelphia (Dance/UP), the Philadelphia branch office of Dance/USA.

“Dance/UP was an incredibly effective dance service organization and we are grateful to the William Penn Foundation for their support at this time. This grant will provide Lois Welk, Director of Dance/UP, and her staff of seven the ability to close down Dance/UP in a thoughtful manner,” said Amy Fitterer, Dance/USA Executive Director, in a press release.

Learn more about the funding here.

Original article:

On January 1, 2015, Dance/UP will no longer function as a branch office of of Dance/USA, due to a sudden loss of funding from the William Penn Foundation. However, the programs and initiatives created by the branch will possibly continue in the near future, just under a different operating model.

Dance/UP was formed in 2007 with startup funding from the William Penn Foundation. The mission of the organization was to advocate for dance as an art form and vital component of our culture, to increase the capabilities of dance artists and organizations, and to enhance the public’s awareness and support for dance.

Dance/UP provided a range of services for the Philadelphia dance community, including hosting one-on-one consultations with Director Lois Welk, underwriting local dance companies home seasons, and creating programming through its Philadelphia Dance Showcase and Dances in Public Places initiative.

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Reactions from the Community

“Everybody is very sad, because people who know Lois [Welk] and know her team know how awesome they are,” said Amy Fitterer, executive director of the National Dance/USA.

Fitterer said there had been a lot of surprise and sadness in reaction to the sudden closing of the branch office.

“There’s anger, because I think the arts community, beyond dance, has been struggling a lot lately. The funding environment there [in Philadelphia] is changing so drastically,” she said.

Terry Fox, director of Philadelphia Dance Projects, an organization whose mission is to support contemporary dance, stated in an email that the closing of Dance/UP  means the resources of the local dance community are no longer centered in one place.

“Dance/UP created a sense of cohesion as a community, which continues to be important even if everyone is not a direct recipient of support or a participant in programs,” Fox added.

Members of the dance community in Philadelphia have created a Change.org petition asking the board of William Penn to consider providing funding for a transition or phase-out period.

“When I moved to Philadelphia 10 years ago I noticed that while the dance scene was buzzing and vibrant, there was no glue tying the disparate camps together.Dance/UP has provided that adhesive; through programming that supports all dance artists in Philly, regardless of their aesthetics; through a physical office space in center city that is welcoming to everyone,” said the creator of the petition, Nicole Bindler, in an email.

“Lois Welk is a visionary and tireless dance advocate who is able to see the lay of the land with clarity and develop solutions to longstanding problems. The amount of programming that Lois and team developed in seven years is astounding considering how small the staff is. Just look at the hundreds of signatures and comments on the petition to see how powerful Dance/UP’s impact has been on us,” she added.

Currently the petition has 860 signatures.

The Last Branch Program of Dance/USA 

Dance/UP won’t be the first program of Dance/USA to cease being a branch office: Dance/NYC was founded as a New York branch office in 2001 and became its own independent 501c3 in 2013. In addition, a branch formed in DC in 2005, Dance Metro DC, later became an independent 501c3 in 2011. Both now are currently service organization members of Dance/USA. Service organizations members of Dance/USA are able to become members the Service Organizations Council, which has representation and voting rights on the Dance/USA Board of Trustees and participate in other Dance/USA activities (and receive other benefits) listed here.

Fitterer said she hopes that the programming of Dance/UP will continue.

“It’s my hope that this closure as a branch office is really just a pause in the local programs and services in Philadelphia. We knew that a transition had to happen and we had been working hard on that transition, and the news from the William Penn, which just three weeks ago (which is just eight weeks before a new budget year) was sudden. We were not anticipating to be zeroed out,” Fitterer said.

The Need to Diversify Funding

In a statement released by William Penn Foundation, Executive Director Laura Sparks said that the foundation is working to ensure that the grants it makes do not make up the majority of any organization’s budget. 

“The Foundation has been a proud supporter of Dance/USA Philadelphia since 2006; however, with more than 600 cultural institutions across the region, there is an increasing demand for financial support and the Foundation is sometimes faced with making difficult decisions regarding where to invest its finite resources at any one time,” Sparks said. “With that in mind, the Foundation continues to seek ways to maximize the impact of its grantmaking while also working to ensure that its grants do not represent the majority of any one organization’s budget.”

Diversifying funding, however, can be tough for small organizations.

John McInerney, vice president of marketing and communications at the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, said that according to the Alliance’s latest Portfolio report, it’s hard for small organizations, like Dance/UP, to diversify their income.

“The research that we’ve done with the Portfolio, we’ve seen that whether you’re a service group, or a small theater or a historic site, it’s much harder for these small groups to diversify income like even a mid or a large-size organization can,” he said.

McInerney, who was also on the advisory committee of Dance/UP, said that he had been aware of vulnerability of the program.

“I’ve been acutely aware of the vulnerability of this program because it was highly dependent on that one grant. Any program or any organization that is dependent primarily on one source of income puts it at risk if that goes away. These grants aren’t guaranteed — they’re for anywhere from one to three years,” McInerney said..

Fitterer said that they have been working to diversify the revenue of the branch program in Philadelphia, and that it currently receives program support from nine institutional funders, in addition to operating support from the William Penn Foundation.

“Regrettably, the William Penn was so generous with tremendous amounts of operating support, that just no other source in Philadelphia could be identified to replace that level of operating support,” she added.

Next Steps

The program is now talking with various funders to try and figure out how it can continue the programming that Dance/UP has provided.

“We have been working really hard with the funders. We’ve been in lots of conversations with William Penn and many of the other foundations to see if anyone can help us with transitional support,” Fitterer said.

In addition, Dance/USA and Dance/UP will be hosting four community discussions this month in Philadelphia to create space for dialogue, sharing, and reflection. Dance/USA hopes to find new homes for the Dance/UP programs and services so that support for the Philadelphia dance community may continue in a new capacity.

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