The Combined Federal Campaign’s cause of the week is arts and humanities.
A report released in March by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bureau of Economic Analysis paints a bleak picture of the coronavirus pandemic’s effect on the sector:
• Between 2019 and 2020, the U.S. arts economy shrank at nearly twice the rate of the economy as a whole.
• The revenue earned by performing arts companies in the third quarter of 2021 was $1.7 billion. In the third quarter of 2019, it was $12.7 billion.
Laura Zabel, executive director of Springboard for the Arts, an economic and community development agency run by and for artists, sees their work as crucial after two years of “crises and trauma … to help us envision and build a future of justice, health and wholeness,” she wrote recently on the Bloomberg News website.
If you would like to fortify the programs that help artists imagine and dream, consider donating to one of the campaign’s many arts-related charities.
If you are unsure of where to focus your giving in this category, the website for the campaign, also known as the CFC, makes it easy:
• Under “CFC Giving system” on the homepage, choose “Online Charity Search” link.
• You will be brought to the “Find a Charity” page. The second field shown will be “Select a Specific Category.” Choose “Arts, Culture and Humanities.” The entries cover A-Z, from the Alaska Botanical Garden to the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.
The Combined Federal Campaign is the federal government’s workplace charity drive. The latest campaign began Sept. 1 and runs through Jan. 14.
Participation in the CFC is voluntary.
The GiveCFC.org website has more information.
This is the sixth in a series of articles spotlighting the Combined Federal Campaign’s cause of the week. Next week: animal welfare.
