"Life is short, Art endures."

By Charles Sowell  

FEBRUARY 3, 2011 3:48 p.m. (1)

After a perfect storm of rising costs associated with the opening of the Chapman Center and flat revenues due to the recession, the Arts Partnership of Greater Spartanburg is back on track in its fund raising efforts.

H. Perry Mixter, outgoing director of the partnership, said, “It wasn’t so much that fundraising slipped (that income was fairly steady) but that our expenses had jumped considerably (in 2009 through 2010) due to the opening of Chapman. We knew this was coming.”

Mixter said the partnership’s income from donations has remained steady at about $800,000 a year while expenses jumped sharply to around $1.2 million.

Filings with the Internal Revenue Service for 2009 show the partnership’s income didn’t equal expenses. “That ($200,000 shortfall) was covered by a $250,000 line of credit that was established with our lender at the start of the fund raising for the Chapman Center,” said Jennifer Evins, who came onboard with the arts partnership in August of last year as director of development.

“Right now we are on track to raise enough money to meet our expenses,” she said.

Mixter, who announced he was leaving the $100,000 a year post as executive director last month, said the change has nothing to do with the shortfall in funding. “I just felt it was time to go on to something else. My passion is for arts startups and the partnership is well-established now.”

Evins and Tommy Young, the partnership’s board chairman, shared Mixter’s assessment of the partnership’s financial strength.

The partnership shared financial data with the Journal, opening the books during a session at the Chapman Center after a check of the filings with the IRS showed the funding shortfall in 2009.

Working purely from IRS data it is difficult to get a clear picture of the partnership’s financial strength, said Evins and Sandy Patrick, director of financial services.

Patrick said standard accounting practice and IRS rules require that the partnership report all income (including monies coming in from the capital campaign) and that makes it seem as if the center had a severe drop in funding.

Actually, because pledges come in at intervals (usually every five years, or so) the partnership showed a spike in income in 2008 followed by seeming drop in 2009.

“We want to be transparent in all of our financial dealings,” Evins said.

“I can tell you, in no uncertain terms, that we are in a solid financial position,” said Young.

In addition to the costs associated with day-to-day operations, the partnership has payments of about $2 million a year for construction bonds issued to build the Chapman Center.

Those bonds will be paid off in 2012, Evins said.

Founded in 1993, the partnership acts as an umbrella organization for nine arts-related entities in Spartanburg County including the Artist’s Guild, Ballet Spartanburg, Carolina Foothills Artisan Center, Spartanburg Art Museum, Historical Association, Little Theatre and Youth Theatre, Spartanburg Repertory Company, Science Center, and the Music Foundation of Spartanburg.

“Some of the groups we support pay their own way and others do not,” Evins said. “Here at the partnership we’ve cut back on staff over the past couple of years by not hiring replacements when people retire, or leave.”

Things like the power bill have spiked, however, since it costs a lot more to keep Chapman open than the old partnership office.

Evins said last year the partnership paid about $190,000 to Duke Energy.

“I’m supposed to meet with Duke soon to talk about that,” she said.

Most of the private donations to the partnership are fairly small, Evins said, and corporations have pared back on their giving, too, during the recession.

“We’re starting to see corporate giving on the way up again,” she said. “That’s a testament to how much things have improved in the local economy.”

But there will continue to be challenges like plans by new Gov. Nicky Haley to do away with funding for the South Carolina Arts Commission.

“That only amounts to about $50,000 a year for us,” Evins said. “But it will be money that we have to raise from other sources if it does come to pass.”