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Home > About Us > News & Events > Buffalo News: Oishei Pledges $6 Million to BPO Oishei Pledges $6 Million To BPOBPO future sounds hopeful
Oishei Foundation’s challenge grant is boost for Philharmonic, city
Updated: 12/17/07 6:45 AM It’s easy to under appreciate the significance of the $6 million pledge made by the John R. Oishei Foundation to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, but the donation represents a great achievement by the orchestra, a generous and farsighted decision by the foundation and a beautiful Christmas gift to all Western New Yorkers.
The donation is the largest in the orchestra’s 72 years, and it will go a long way toward providing the economic stability the orchestra is seeking with its “Secure the Future” endowment campaign. It’s a critical goal, especially in light of the financial turmoil the orchestra has endured over the years.
There’s a lot to like about this donation, beginning with the fact of its existence. The orchestra board has tried in the past to build an endowment, without success. Obtaining that kind of less-visible gift is much more difficult than securing sponsorship for particular shows or other higher-profile donations that allow the givers to bask in the glow of their generosity.
But if endowments are less flashy, they nonetheless provide a permanent stream of operating revenue that is critical to the long-term success of many cultural endeavors, especially those in poor cities like Buffalo. The Philharmonic is critical to this community, tied into its psyche just as the Bills and Sabres are, if less overtly.
But the orchestra’s existence has always been more tenuous than the sports teams’. This gift will help to eliminate that historic threat, a fact that brings up another of the Oishei donation’s advantages: It’s a challenge grant.
The orchestra’s goal is to raise $30 million for its subsidy, and with Oishei’s gift, it has raised $21.1 million. In order to get it, though, the orchestra must raise the remaining $8.9 million by the campaign’s December 2008 deadline. With other pending donations totaling $7 million and the drive’s $5 million public campaign
about to begin, prospects look good, but there’s nothing like a $6 million incentive to focus the mind.
The future is looking much brighter for the Buffalo Philharmonic than it did just a few years ago. For that, the community can thank the orchestra for what seems likely to be a successful endowment campaign, the Oishei Foundation for its remarkably generous donation and the gift of every other individual and group whose dollars helped make the difference.
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© 2008 The John R. Oishei Foundation