Businesses helped make Minnesota’s arts scene. Can they unmake it?

Minnesota businesses helped build the Guthrie Theater. But fewer of them are helping to maintain it.

Back in 1959, British director Tyrone Guthrie and two colleagues, disenchanted with New York City and dreaming of a regional theater, posted an ad in the New York Times inviting cities to take them up on their idea. They picked Minneapolis partly because of the support of young business leaders, said Joseph Haj, the Guthrie’s artistic director. “I could hardly exaggerate the huge contribution of the corporate sector in establishing and ensuring the viability of the Guthrie Theater.”

But that support has eroded. Over the past decade, the Guthrie, which posted a record $3.8 million deficit last year, has seen its corporate grants and sponsorships shrink by half.

Many of Minnesota’s stalwart arts organizations also have experienced steep declines. Some key Twin Cities businesses have stepped back their funding for the arts to focus on other priorities, creating a dramatic contraction not only in arts organizations’ budgets but seasons, venues and, some say, creativity.

Arts leaders warn that the consequences could hinder businesses’ ability to recruit here.

“Listen, nobody is coming to Minnesota for the weather or for the taxes,” Haj said. “They’re coming here because the quality of life and raising your kids and belonging to community are very high here, and that has a lot to do with our arts.”

For decades, Minnesota’s art organizations enjoyed an “extraordinary” investment from its Fortune 500 companies, creating “a world-class arts scene that punches way above its weight in comparison to many larger cities,” said Christopher Stevens, the Walker Art Center’s chief of advancement. “So when the trend in corporate giving hit the United States, in a strange way it hit Minnesota harder. We had more to lose.”

At the Walker, grants and sponsorships from three big, locally rooted companies — Target, General Mills and Medtronic — used to total about $600,000 a year. None provides funding now.

A decade ago, Minnesota Opera got about $727,000 in grants from institutions, or about 8.3% of its total revenue. By 2023, that had shrunk to $234,000, or just 1.3%.

At the Children’s Theatre Company, corporate funding, including event sponsorships, has dropped 33% over the past 10 years — and 61% over the past five. The number of corporate funders also has declined: There were 44 contributors in 2023, compared with 80 in 2014.

Arts organizations are responding to such losses amid other financial pressures, including rising costs and, in some cases, attendance that hasn’t fully rebounded since the pandemic. The Minnesota Opera trimmed an opera from its season. The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is performing at fewer venues. In May, the state’s oldest ballet company, Minnesota Dance Theatre, halted performances, laying off its professional dancers.

Last month, 10 major arts organizations sent a letter to the Minnesota Business Partnership: “To the corporations of Minnesota, we issue a call to action,” it says. “Recommit to supporting the arts as a cornerstone of our region’s identity and prosperity.”

In a statement, the Minnesota Business Partnership, that includes more than 100 CEOs and senior executives from the state’s largest employers, said that “the Minnesota business community has been a dedicated and active supporter of the arts for generations and we are looking forward to learning more about the current situation from local arts leaders.”

A Target spokesperson confirmed that the corporation gives less to the arts now.

But the Target Foundation is giving more to the region overall, with 95 “hometown” grants totaling $10.7 million in 2023. The corporation has prioritized three areas of giving, according to its annual report: economic opportunity, community development and environmental sustainability, with an eye toward “long-term solutions designed to address systemic issues.”

Before 2020, dozens of arts organizations, from theaters to publishing houses, received big, flexible grants from the Target Foundation, tax filings show.

Just three arts organizations nabbed grants under the foundation’s new criteria, according to the company’s most recent tax filing. Juxtaposition Arts in north Minneapolis received $200,000; Springboard for the Arts got $150,000; and Migizi, a Native American nonprofit in Minneapolis, got $50,000.

Amid the pandemic and following the murder of George Floyd, foundations turned more attention and dollars to urgent social issues, said James Sewell, artistic director of the James Sewell Ballet, which announced this month that it would sunset after 35 seasons. “And I would never say that people are wrong for doing that.”

But the arts need to be part of how we heal, too, he continued. “The arts are how we connect and how we keep problems from happening. The arts are preventative.”

For 15 years, they weren’t just Thursday nights at the Walker. They were Target Free Thursday Nights.

It was one of the biggest programs Jacqueline Cassidy ran as manager of public programs at the Walker from 2015 to 2021. Target didn’t only cover folks’ admission; it provided funding for programming, too. Art-making and music, poetry readings and tours. Cassidy used it to counter real and perceived barriers, planning programming that welcomed artists and audiences of color.

“The community saw themselves in the programming,” said Cassidy, who now works as an independent arts and culture consultant.

As a Minnesota-raised, arts-loving citizen, she’s watched with concern as Target and other corporations have stopped or stepped down their funding for the arts, noting the loss of educational programming that tends to follow.

Thursday nights at the Walker are still free. They‘re now sponsored by the Principal Foundation.

Many local companies, including Ameriprise Financial, 3M and U.S. Bank, still support the arts, said Stevens, of the Walker. But it has been difficult, if not impossible, to replace the loss of Target dollars with other funders, several arts organizations said. It’s been even harder to replace them with donations from individuals.

“It is a crisis,” said Margaret Wurtele, whose name adorns a stage at the Guthrie. In the 1980s, Wurtele, whose parents were instrumental in the Guthrie’s creation, was the managing director of the Dayton Hudson Foundation, Target’s predecessor. Then, 40% of that foundation’s funding was dedicated to the arts, she said. (Another 40% went to social action and 20% to projects that popped up.) Then, corporate CEOs understood that people would move to chilly Minnesota if it boasted thriving arts organizations, Wurtele said.

“The Dayton-Hudson brass, every one of the top executives, were on at least one major arts organization board,” she said. And they were active: “It wasn’t resume dressing; it was real.”

Corporate recruiters have long used the arts to “dazzle” people considering a move to the Twin Cities, said Rachel Koep, managing director of the St. Paul-based Ballet Co.Laboratory.

“And now those investments are starting to go away,” she said. “That’s drastically changing the local arts scene.

“So in order to tout our great arts and culture scene, there also needs to be an investment in that scene.”

Many folks who attend a performance assume that their ticket covers the cost of that performance, Koep said, but ticket revenue alone cannot rent the theater, pay the dancers, make the costumes and market the show. Ballet Co.Laboratory also offers at least 25 free performances and workshops a year in schools and hospitals.

There’s demand to do more than that, she added, but the nonprofit can’t afford to.

Koep bemoaned the loss of the Cowles Center for Dance and the Performing Arts, which went dark in March, of Minnesota Dance Theatre’s company, which stopped performing in May, and of Zenon Dance Company, which ceased its performances in 2019, citing loss of foundational support. Then, the James Sewell Ballet announced it would close in March, citing the loss of corporate funding as “the biggest thing.”

Losing the James Sewell Ballet means losing “six good jobs for dancers,” Sewell said last week, further eroding the Twin Cities dance community’s ability to sustain careers.

Zachary Tuazon grew up in Illinois, studied dance in Indianapolis and moved to Minneapolis in 2015 for a company position with the Minnesota Dance Theatre. “I didn’t know anything about Minneapolis,” he said, and was amazed by the dance scene, including James Sewell Ballet, Zenon and TU Dance.

He taught at dance studios and joined the Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus. He met his partner, made his home.

But then in February, Minnesota Dance Theatre announced that it would end professional performances. By August, Tuazon and his partner were packing. Tuazon had nabbed a job with the Ohio Contemporary Ballet.

“It’s an ecosystem,” he said. “You take away one portion of it, the whole thing is weakened. There’s still dance happening, but it’s definitely not the same as when I first moved here.”

Before a midday concert at the Ordway in April, a handful of women gathered in the sunlit lobby to hear about the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s plan to cut three suburban venues. It was the biggest group to attend one of the town halls the SPCO had offered on the topic so far.

President Jon Limbacher began explaining the decision with “a bit of context.”

“I would say that this moment in time in the performing arts, and that includes orchestras, operas and theaters, is probably the most challenging since the World War II era,” he said. “There’s sort of a perfect storm right now of challenges.”

Among them: declining concert subscribers, rising costs, demographic shifts. And the loss of corporate support. Many corporations have turned their support toward important priorities, such as food insecurity, Limbacher told the group. But it’s a significant loss.

As he spoke, the space got warmer and the sunlight more intense. The women began removing their coats. One wiped her brow.

From 2019 to 2024, the SPCO saw a decrease of $820,364 in institutional and foundation support. That’s equivalent to 9.6% of the nonprofit’s revenue for 2024.

“I would say our hope is that over time, the pendulum will swing back the other way,” said Limbacher, one of the leaders who signed the letter to the business group. “But that there’s no sign of that. Prudently, we have to adapt to that.”

Indeed, corporate giving in the U.S. has declined from its peak in the late 1980s. In 2022, U.S. corporations donated 0.9% of their pretax profits, compared with 2% in 1986, according to the annual Giving USA report published by the Giving USA Foundation with research by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

A few years ago, the Children’s Theatre board used their retreat to dig into the long-term loss of corporate giving, said Steve Thompson, then interim managing director. They invited leaders of the corporate foundations, asking “Can you help us understand what’s going on here?”

What they learned is that they could tailor their work to align with companies’ goals. Think community development. Community impact.

Talking afterward, they realized, “Hey, we do that,” Thompson said. “But we’re not doing a particularly good job of telling that story.”

Now, Children’s Theatre is making that case. So are other arts groups.

3Mgives, which includes 3M’s philanthropy, product donations and matches to employees’ donations, focuses its funding on STEM, skill trades and manufacturing. So one obvious partner is the Bakken Museum, a Minneapolis museum that specializes in science, said Michael Stroik, director of 3Mgives. Twin Cities PBS, too, nabbed 2023 funding for hands-on STEM activities for after-school programs.

But the Bakken is also receiving general funding from 3M. Since 2021, the Maplewood-headquartered corporation has given more than $600,000 annually to Twin Cities arts nonprofits for general operations — a flexible, coveted form of funding.

“We think very highly of our arts community,” Stroik said.

Juxtaposition Arts in north Minneapolis is not just an arts education program for teens, said co-founder and CEO Roger Cummings. It’s also a design center, a workforce development organization and a real estate developer. The trick is getting corporations to see it that way.

After George Floyd’s murder, the Black-led nonprofit felt an influx of funding from corporations and foundations. Not just from Minnesota, but nationally.

Now, four years later, much of that funding has gone cold, Cummings said. “Everybody pulled back.”

Juxtaposition raised $13 million of the $14 million it needed for its new home in north Minneapolis. It’s still working on that last million. The nonprofit plans to use that funding to program the new spaces, hire employees and offer competitive benefits, including a 401(k) match.

“Corporate doesn’t want to hear that,” Cummings said, “but those are real things.”

Companies like round numbers, he added. Fundraising for the 29-year-old nonprofit’s annual Sneaker Ball, a few companies told him to “come back to us when you’re celebrating your 30th anniversary.” But arts nonprofits can’t constantly be celebrating a ribbon-cutting or an anniversary, he said.

The daily work needs sustenance, too.