Lexington, KY - Horses, bourbon, and the University of Kentucky are signature elements of central Kentucky's Bluegrass region. A unique philanthropic enterprise combining all three is making its mark to better music education for Kentucky kids.
Keeneland and Maker's Mark have partnered for 13 years to raise funds for various charitable endeavors. Their latest teaming benefits a music outreach program through UK's College of Fine Arts for elementary schools throughout the commonwealth.
Fran Taylor, executive director of the Keeneland Foundation, and John Nardolillo, music director and conductor of the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, recently joined Business Lexington philanthropy columnist Anne Nash to discuss this Bluegrass-style philanthropic effort.
Just how does such a collaboration get started? Fran Taylor provided the details: "We have often worked closely with the university in a wide variety of different capacities, working with the business college or the arts, music, medical college - you name it, we've worked with them. And we pitched this idea to the music department, or to Ben Arnold originally, about a music of the horse collaboration. Could we create a CD that really was all about music that was inspired by or written about the horse?"
The resulting CD, "The Music of the Horse,"
is currently on sale, and a second one is being planned. But the CD turned out to be just the beginning.
"Still, my hope with this would be that it would be utilized to develop after-school programming for children," Taylor said. "And this collaboration has become something that we mutually wanted to do through our partnership, that benefited Kentucky, that benefited children, that exposed children to music. And through another partnership that Keeneland has Ö with Maker's Mark, they were open to listening to our pitch to develop a music outreach program, which they very generously kicked off in 2009 through the proceeds of the special limited edition. We call it Keeneland's Maker's Mark bottle."
On the wish list for the UK College of Fine Arts was to obtain funding for music outreach. Nardolillo told how the funding and programming happened: "The idea was that these funds that are coming from Maker's Mark to the Keeneland Foundation are being matched by the university's 'Bucks for Brains' program. And then, that has prompted additional donors from the community to step forward and put more money into this pot, and these funds have created an endowment, which will (continue) on an ongoing basis. You know, the interest from the endowment will underwrite these outreach concerts. So what we're doing is the students from the university and the University Orchestra are going out into communities all over Kentucky, and we're going into schools and playing for school kids. We're going to play for thousands of school kids already this year in all different parts of Kentucky, and then we're playing concerts in the performing arts centers all around the state."
For this collaboration, the Maker's Mark bottle featured UK Coach Rich Brooks. With the matching funds from UK, this whole endeavor will end up producing $1.2 million or more for the music outreach program to school children. This has so inspired the partners that UK has now launched another innovative program.
"UK has taken another step by having three county extension agents around the state whose focus is arts - not just agriculture, as everybody expects for the county extension agent, but actually the arts," Taylor said.
"And UK is the first school in the country to do that," Nardolillo said.
Previous Keeneland and Maker's Mark bottles have generated significant multi-year funding for UK's Markey Cancer Center and for their foundation for cancer research; the Maker's Mark Secretariat Center at the Kentucky Horse Park; and in its earlier years, for the Tubby Smith Foundation and Daniel Pitino Foundation.
In these difficult times for charities and donors, innovating to meet needs is essential. Collaboration, leveraging funds and creativity are hallmarks of this quintessential Bluegrass philanthropy project. Let's hope that other central Kentucky philanthropists and nonprofits will find similar winning combinations.
Anne Nash is the owner of My Giving Advisor, LLC, a philanthropic advising firm. www.mygivingadvisor.com