SCFD's NEW LOOK AT COVID CARNAGE ON METRO NONPROFITS

By John Moore, Senior Arts Journalist

In September, we brought you this snapshot detailing the overall devastation on metro, state and national arts industries from the COVID shutdown. It showed how 59,179 of Colorado’s 103,401 arts jobs were vaporized by the end of July, along with $1.4 billion in lost sales revenue.

And it came with a dire prediction from Dana Rinderknecht, Director of Online Giving for the Community First Foundation, who administers the annual (and upcoming) Colorado Gives Day. 

“I think we are going to see mass closings and mergers of nonprofits at the beginning of 2021,” she said then.

And now the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, a voter-approved taxing district that last year made $60 million available to more than 300 arts, culture and science organizations in the seven-county Denver metro area, has come out with a new membership survey taken in September. It includes results from 275 currently or recently funded organizations.

You may not want to know what it says, but ... here goes.

FINANCIAL IMPACT
• 86 percent of responding SCFD organizations report that they have experienced a severe financial impact because of the pandemic.
• 52 percent said they have at least five months of adequate operating reserves in the bank.
• 33 percent of all jobs have been either furloughed or terminated.

ONLINE PROGRAMMING
• 42 percent of organizations say they have pivoted to virtual engagement.
• Of those, 75 percent say they have had moderate to no success in monetizing their virtual efforts.

THE FUTURE
• 59 percent of organizations are moderately confident of their eventual survival
• 8 percent are not at all confident of organizational survival

COVID and the toll on individual artists

For information on how to support the arts through the pandemic, go to artsthroughitall.org