The Arts & Science Council on Tuesday announced grants totaling $7.7 million for its 2010-11 year, including nearly $192,000 for the Harvey B. Gantt Center and lesser amounts to fund dozens of community and diversity projects.

The total for the upcoming year was about 4 percent less than the amount awarded last year, when ASC reductions were even more severe, with recipient groups facing cuts of 25 percent to 30 percent.

Like nearly all nonprofits, the ASC has struggled against a bad economy to meet fundraising goals. The group raised $7.3 million from private donors in 2010, barely hitting its target.

ASC will receive another $2.9 million from the city of Charlotte. But Mecklenburg County, strapped for cash and facing its own cutbacks, reduced its ASC support to $150,000 from last year’s nearly $800,000.

The Mecklenburg cut led to this year’s reductions in grants, the ASC said Tuesday.

Among the smaller groups receiving ASC funding:

• The First Baptist Church-West Community Services Association will get $7,350 for fine arts and academic instruction for at-risk students attending the Clara H. Jones Summer Institute.
   
• The Historic Rosedale Plantation will get $7,500 for black history programming to help tell the story of the plantation’s slaves and descendents.
   
• Public television station WTVI will get $7,500 for a Steve Crump documentary about the historic influence and rebirth of African American banjo players.
   
• And the Second Ward High School National Alumni Foundation will get $4,500 to produce a drama and heritage event, along with a companion DVD, commemorating the former African American community known as Brooklyn.

In total, the ASC awarded $358,000 to community and diversity projects. More than $7.3 million went to 26 larger groups -- including $935,462 to Discovery Place, $503,710 to Levine Museum of the New South and nearly $1.2 million to the Mint Museum.

Officials also outlined some ACS priorities for the next 12 months.

Leaders said they want to focus on restoring education funding lost to county and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools cutbacks. Over the last two years, they said, this funding has dwindled from $1.4 million to the current $400,000. Education funding is used to expose public school students, and sometimes teachers, to arts and cultural.

ASC officials said they also want to begin developing a long-term model for fundraising would that rely less on employee pledge campaigns. The council gets about 60 percent of its private money from roughly 30,00 workers who agree to payroll deductions.

ASC President Scott Provancher said that while the arts council would not abandon employee pledges, leaders would seek to raise more cash from individuals who either cannot or will not donate at work.

One idea, he said, is to develop an online system whereby potential donors could choose from a list of proposed projects that need funding. At the same time, benefactors also could use the system to propose projects currently not in existance and challenge others to give.

ASC officials said they also would seek input from elected officials, individuals and community groups to update the group’s “cultural action plan. The plan ultimately determines how ASC money is spent. Officials said the plan was last reviewed in 1998.

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Charlotte Observer reporter Steven Brown contributed to this report.
 

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