The following 11 organizations will each be awarded grants between $275,000 and $750,000 over four years (2008-11) in recognition of "their commitment to community and audience building activities":
- Alonzo King's LINES Ballet
- Center for Asian American Media
- Contemporary Jewish Museum
- Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
- ODC/San Francisco
- San Francisco Girls Chorus
- SF JAZZ
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
- San Francisco Opera
- World Arts West
- Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
These organzations have "made a commitment to engage more people deeply in the arts as part of their DNA," said Wallace Foundation president Christine DeVita in a statement.
San Francisco Opera will uses the funds to support its research efforts targeting families with young children ages 6-12 and young adults ages 25-40. The company, along with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Yerba Buena Center, received the highest allocations.
"We created these awards to draw national attention to the importance of engaging more people in the arts, to encourage organizations to sustain and expand the impact of their work with local constituencies, and to generate an assortment of useful, broadly-applicable lessons and practices that will be helpful to the field," said DeVita.
Established by Reader's Digest founders DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, the New York-based Wallace Foundation is an independent, private charitable foundation with assets exceeding $1.5 billion.
