How would you like to write a check and immediately double your money? No, this is not some wacky Internet joke but a very real way of investing in three important areas of Santa Barbara: arts, education and health. Write a check through a challenge grant and your donation is doubled.
Challenge grants or matching grants have been around for a long time. The idea is that a grant is given if it is matched by a deadline. Usually it’s one-to-one: Make a $100 donation and it becomes $200, or $5,000 magically becomes $10,000.
Our community currently has at least three campaigns with challenge grants: The Granada Theatre (Santa Barbara Center for the Performing Arts), Computers for Families (Partners in Education) and Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. Hundreds of people have raised impressive funds and are close to reaching their goals, but could use your help.
What does $500,000 have to do with $60 million? That is less than 1 percent left to be raised for The Granada’s purchase of the theater property (separate owner for the tower) and restoration of a 1,550-seat first-class venue with outstanding acoustics. Six resident companies call it home: Santa Barbara Symphony, Opera Santa Barbara, CAMA, State Street Ballet UCSB Arts & Lectures and Santa Barbara Choral Society. For a town our size, this is heady stuff.
The Granada opened March 6 with $10 million of the campaign to go when Anne and Michael Towbes stepped in. Their $5 million challenge grant must be met by Dec. 31. The goal is close but only with your help. This gorgeous theater will be an important part of our local performing arts scene for decades to come. Click here for more information.
“The end result has been a performance space which exceeds our fondest expectations, both in its breathtaking beauty and its superior acoustics,” Towbes said. “Anne and I felt moved to do this … an exclamation point on this momentous campaign.”
In education, Santa Barbara Partners in Education matches local businesses to schools supporting educational programs such as Computers for Families. More than 600 low-income students/families are given computers to bridge the digital divide. The Bacara Challenge (Bacara Resort & Spa and Alvin Dworman Foundation) offered $125,000 to be matched dollar-for-dollar by March 1. Partners in Education has raised $40,000 toward this grant and is closer to the final $4 million campaign goal.
Happiness can be defined when a $100 million capital campaign tentatively reaches its goal, as Cottage Hospital may have done. When starting, that $100 million goal seemed impossible. If you have driven in the vicinity of Bath and Pueblo streets, you know the scope of the hospital’s building. It is there to serve all of us and it has taken a massive community effort.
During the final phase this year, The Wood Claeyssens Foundation offered a $5 million challenge. The board and staff dug in.
“It looks close, but we have to bring our facts and figures together in January when we audit the books and declare the campaign a success,” said Dave Dietrich.
If everyone reading this could give $25, it would be worth $50. Give that — or more? — and the Granada would nearly be paid for, far more kids would have computer capabilities at home and Cottage Hospital will serve more people better . Whatever the size of your gift, it counts. The best deal? You can double your money while helping our community.
Granada Theatre board member Susan Miles Gulbransen is a writer, book reviewer and co-founder of the annual Santa Barbara Book & Author Festival.
