by: Brian Morgan and Gary Schuster
Host: Hello and welcome to Upfront and Legal. On this edition, Brian Morgan and Gary Schuster from the firm of Jacobowitz and Gubits, Walden and Monticello, talk about Art. What do lawyers have to do with Art? Well, quite a bit as it turns out. Together Brian and Gary will examine the building of the new Orange County Arts' Council along with their guest, Dawn Ansbro, who is Board President of that organization, the Orange County Arts' Council. To begin, here's Brian Morgan.
GBM: Welcome to the program Gary. GMS: Thank you Brian.
GBM: Could you tell us how you came to be involved with the Orange County Arts' Council?
GMS: Well I was working with Jacobowitz & Gubits, have only been there about 3 years. I had previously been working down in Manhattan 9 years. I was working with LeRoy Neiman, the painter, and his publishing company. I was the in-house lawyer there. Prior to that I worked mostly in music publishing so I have a long interest in history and the arts. I came up to this part of the world. I looked around for ways to become active in the Arts and actually it was the Orange County Citizen's Foundation, was doing a study of the Arts needs and resources here in the county. I became a little bit involved in that and one of their recommendations was the formation of an Arts' Council and working with all those people at the Citizen's Foundation we slowly and finally formed an Arts' Council.
GBM: What is it at Jacobowitz & Gubits that you do?
GMS: I'm on the business team at J&G. We do all sorts of services for businesses. We form businesses, buy and sell businesses, bring in investors, new shareholders, but part of that for me is representing clients in the Arts & Entertainment.
GBM: LeRoy Neiman, that's a big name. That's big business.
GMS: He is a big business. He's one of those people who creates wealth. Not just for himself but for several other companies. There's two or three printing companies that he keeps busy, publishing companies with several employees, there's a warehouse, there's galleries all over the country that wait for his works so that they can sell it. He publishes books. He's got more than a dozen books. So its really interesting to see how one creative person can make wealth, not just for him but for dozen of people around him. Actually years before I worked for Phillip Glass as well, Composer of Operas and those things. And that was a similar situation. One man kept a recording studio, he has copious, he had a lot of people working for him. He had three accounting firms, so one creative person can creative a lot of work for a lot of people.
GBM: Does that have anything to do with your business in the Arts' Council? In other words, Arts is business?
GMS: Well one of my personal goals on the Arts' Council is to get the Arts a little respect as a business. A study recently came out that said, I think they measured something like sixteen non-profit Arts organizations that are in our county and they generated, I forget the number exactly, but on the order of ten or fifteen million dollars a year in revenues.
GBM: Sixteen million.
GMS: Sixteen million, very good. GBM: And according to your website.
GMS: According to my website, and in fact, only sixteen organizations responded, there's actually fifty-three organizations, and that doesn't count the four profit businesses, so the Arts actually generate quite a lot of money. They employ a lot of people, they pay taxes, and I want to increase awareness of that and hopefully make for better organization and better promotion of the Arts as a business.
GBM: So Dawn, how did you get interested in the Arts' Council?
DA: Hi Brian. Actually, I also became involved in the Council's Affairs Committee through the Orange County Citizen's Foundation. I work for the Lycian Centre in Sugarloaf and have known Nancy Proyect for a while. She invited me to become part of the Cultural Affairs Committee and when the Arts' Council was formed for consistency sake there was a desire to have some of the committee members sort of transfer over to the Board so that we could have some continuity in the thought process. So I moved over to the Board and then, low and behold, they made me President. Who knew?
GBM: What does the President do at the Arts' Council? DA: What does a President do?
GBM: Or is this just a new job that your going to pretty much create for yourself?
DA: Well it's a new organization. It's a new everything for us. So there are a lot of sort of ground laying jobs that need to be done right now and in lieu of having an Executive Director, because we don't have a staff person on yet, myself and with the help of the rest of the Board have really been laying the foundation for the Council, establishing accounts, establishing relationships with the other organizations in the County, working with County Executive, Ed Diana, and the County Legislators for funding, which we are very appreciative of.
GBM: So what is your relationship with the County then? Ed Diana, the County Executive and the County Legislature. Are they supporters of the Arts' Council directly? Are they involved directly or is it indirectly in their business?
DA: There are very supportive of the Arts' Council. They really aren't, County Executive Ed Diana and the Orange County Legislators provided us with the seed money to begin this process of establishing the Arts' Council and they are working on renewing that commitment for next year. Which we are very thankful for. We do have County Representatives on the Arts' Council Board. Angie Casebirden is the Director of Grants for the County and she is a
Board Member of ours and as far as fund raising concerns, she's a valuable Board member for us and then there are two County Legislators who serve on the Board as well, voluntary, not appointed. But Frank Fornario is also on our Board as is Wayne Decker. So there is a relationship with the County however we are not a County department.
GBM: Right.
DA: We are a separate organization. A separate 501(C)3 organization.
GBM: Do you have that certification from the IRS?
DA: Yeah, we are working on that certification. We are waiting for it to come through. GBM: Not an easy process.
DA: So I'm told.
GBM: Gary, are you involved in that?
GMS: Sure, I helped put together the paperwork for that and we just recently submitted the application to the IRS and sadly it takes many, many months to get something back but we see no reason why we shouldn't get our tax exemption. So we are going to be seeking funding from all sorts of corporations and other foundations and the County is very generous with the seed money but we going to go to a lot of other places for our funding.
GBM: So what is the significance of 501(C)3 designation for your purposes?
GMS: That has a very important function. It makes you a tax exempt organization. You don't pay taxes on your income, generally, of course there are always exceptions. But most importantly, contributions to the entity are tax deductible to the donor. There's limitations on that as well. So as all the paperwork says, consult your tax advisor, but generally it enables people to make donations to the entity and to take a charitable tax deduction on their federal tax returns.
GBM: Now why would people contribute money to the Orange County Arts' Council? For one thing, do you have a membership category of some kind? Do you have members? There are other people who might not be members who might want to give some money for tax deduction purposes or whatever?
GMS: At the moment we don't have members but we intend to in a year or two. We're just getting our footing and organizing ourselves and it is certainly a goal of ours to have members but we aren't quite ready for that just yet. People contribute to the Arts' Council because they want to promote the Arts because they want to promote the Arts. We have programs where they are very new but one of our first programs is Arts for Vets. We have a variety of Arts activities that Veterans can participate in. There's a writing program. There's, believe it or not, a rebuilding stone walls, which has been a very popular activity to these fellows and photography, painting, pottery, carving. So these are activities that Veterans can take advantage of. There's no charge to them and of course, the money has to come from somewhere so it comes from contributions that people make.
GBM: I get the impression that Arts' Councils in different counties have different functions that they undertake. Is that correct?
DA: That is absolutely true Brian. I had the good fortune to attend an Arts' Summit about a month ago in Schnectady that was hosted by the Alliance for the New York State Arts' Organizations and there were many many Arts' Councils that were represented in this three day event. One of the things that I learned was that every Arts' Council has it's own flavor and it's own unique spot in what it is able to do for it's county. There are some Arts organization that are purely service organization, there are other Arts' organizations that, in fact, are the Arts for that county. There are others that are presenting organizations and produce works that only galleries, that own theaters, so there are really a number of different flavors of Arts' Councils. But I think the one common thread to all of them is the belief and need for the Arts in your area and the belief that they need to be both strengthened and promoted so that the quality of life in the area is better for it.
GBM: It seems like you have a lot of wide spread support here in Orange county for the Arts' Council. Is that growing at a fast clip would you say and what do you see yourself doing in another two years with this Arts' Council?
DA: In another two years Brian, I hope to be a membership organization with all of the Arts' organizations participating. Of course, we would like to continue County support but I envision certainly corporate support, local individual donors support, a foundation and grant support for the Arts' Council. There certainly is a possibility that we would become a granting organization at that point in our development. We are in the process of recruiting for a new Executive Director that will help us on that road. We hope to have that person in place by January of next year. So I think there is a great deal of potential for a full time Orange County Arts' Council right now and we are pretty excited to be on the ground floor of it.
GBM: Well, I'm involved somewhat in the Dutchess County Arts' Council across the river and I have to say that we are fortunate because we have been around for long enough that we are able to have some of the programs that your talking about. One of the programs that's just absolutely amazing is called the Arts and Education program. And if you ever go to sleep at night wondering if, if you know, your day has been worthwhile, put a grant or two in the Arts and Education program and you will sleep very well because some of the programs that they have in the schools for disabled people. For instance, it's amazing what they can do with that money. Kids especially who cannot communicate adequately and in traditional ways, sometimes has the genius of expression that you cannot imagine.
Host: Brian Morgan, Gary Schuster and Dawn Ansbro will return after a commercial break.
Host: Welcome back to Upfront and Legal. On this edition, Brian Morgan and Gary Schuster from the firm of Jacobowitz & Gubits, Walden and Monticello are talking Art. What do lawyers have to do with Art? Well as your learning, quite a bit. Together Brian and Gary are examining the building at the new Orange County Arts' Council along with their guest, Dawn Ansbro, who is Board President of that organization, the Orange County Arts' Council. Once again, here's Brian Morgan.
GBM: Gary, you set up the Orange County Arts ' Council. Is that a corporation?
GMS: It is a corporation. It is a non-for-profit corporation. In New York state you need to have at least three people as Directors to form a not-for-profit and the corporation has to have a notfor-profit purpose. There are some pretty clear definitions of what those purposes can be and the Arts and culture are definitely one of those charitable purposes. So setting up the corporation was not a big deal. The hard work actually comes in the tax exemption. You have to project your finances for three years and identify your funding sources and they ask an awful lot of questions about how you operate.
GBM: And who is that asks those questions? GMS: That's the IRS. Our friends at the IRS. GBM: But the state regulates you also?
GMS: The state wants to make sure that your purposes as set out in your Certificate of Incorporation, that your purposes are within the permitted purposes under the Not-for-profit Corporation Law and once it's formed they pretty much leave you alone. Frequently you need approval if your going to be teaching, if part of your purpose is to teach, then you frequently need the permission of the Department of Education. If your going to be involved in health care in some way, you need to approval of the Health Department. They frequently require that you get approval, a Certificate of Approval, from the applicable governmental agency before they will give you your corporation. In our case, we did not need to get anyone's approval, but we had to spell out very clearly that we weren't going to be teaching anything. One of the choices that we made early in this process was that we were not going to compete with the Arts presenters that are in the county. You don't want to run Arts shows, we don't want to present theater, we don't want to step on the toes of people we are trying to help. We want to support them, we want to fund them, but we don't want to compete with them. Some Arts' Councils do those kinds of activities but we decided very early on we didn't want to.
GBM: Dawn, does the Arts' Council plan to bring your programs around the county to the different Townships and Villages?
DA: One of the things we actually planning right now Brian, is to have a series of Town meetings throughout the county and in various areas of the county. We will be promoting these Town meetings. We will invite artists, community members, corporate representatives, anybody that's interested in participating to find out a little bit about the Arts' Council, about our mission and what we are doing and then our goal in these meetings is to find out what the community wants from us. What can we do to help support the Arts in the community, what are they really looking for from us and we really feel strongly that through these meetings we'll get a better sense of what we should be doing, moving forward over the next two years.
GBM: So your growing this from the bottom up is what your doing? DA: Absolutely.
GBM: The grass roots.
DA: Absolutely. And it would really be presumptuous of us to think that just a fourteen person Board, talented and wonderful though we are, to know ourselves, what it is that the County
wants from us so we very much want to hear what everybody thinks about the Arts' Council and what they think we should be doing for them. That's really why we are here.
GBM: So what other programs do you have that come to mind?
DA: One of the other programs that we are working on right now that's near and dear to my heart, and you mentioned Arts and Education Brian, one of our school Superintendents, Ken Eastwood, from the Middletown school system, he used to work in upstate New York and was involved in a program called the Scholastic Art Awards Program sponsored by Scholastic, Inc. There is absolutely no southern New York county that's currently involved in this program. And what it does is it offers students from 7th grade through 12th grade an opportunity to present a writing works and art works for submission for judging for awards and in some cases for even monetary awards should they get to the national level because this is in fact a national program. We're very excited about it, we are right now collaborating with Ulster, Dutchess and Sullivan counties on this. We've bought some of the BOCES representatives in to talk to us about this. We have actually a couple of Middletown art teachers involved. We are very excited about the program and actually I had a chance to speak to the Scholastic Art Awards people yesterday and they are very anxious to help us move this along. So we hope to implement this for the 2008/2009 school year. As a new organization, we are very interested in seeing what other Arts' Councils in the area are doing too, for example, the Dutchess County Arts' Council, Brian, is really a well respected and very established Arts' organization in the area. We know we could learn a lot from you guys.
GBM: Oh, thanks. I know that it has one of the most tremendous Executive Director's President, Benjamin Krevolin, who I understand has been helpful in setting up this Arts' Council.
DA: He's really been wonderful, a great sounding board, and wonderful source of information for us.
GBM: Well he's a real professional. He's a young fellow. He was hired about three years ago and we haven't looked back since. The Arts' Council has been growing at a fast clip, our funding, the amount of programs that we fund are going up, the Arts and Education Program is one of the big, the big leaders of what we do. The process of program grants is rather regulated and a difficult process from an administrative point of view. But, in the end, despite the red tape, what you have is, you have hundreds of qualified programs competing with each other, trying to get a bit of funding so that they can pay their expenses or whatever as they set up and exhibit, or set up a performance, or competition, or something like that, and its not always very much money, maybe a few hundred, a few thousand dollars to each program, but they come back on an annual basis and its really gratifying to see how some of these organizations grow. And then there's other categories like funded members, well the Bardavon is a funded member and so they get a fairly large contribution from us every year. But they earn it. They have a lot of programs, they have high visibility and you talk about economic benefits of the Arts and that is a magnet for money in Dutchess county and so we take good care of that along with other funded members. But Benjamin Krevolin is just amazing because he is active in Ulster county, in Orange county and Dutchess county. He's always on his way back and forth between Albany and Poughkeepsie. He runs a really tight ship and its amazing that he never forgets a thing. And what I mean to say by that, that he floats an idea or somebody floats an idea and two years later he'll just remember that "well that was a great idea maybe it is time to act on that now." It's not like in one ear and out the other like some bureaucrats can be.
Dutchess county, the Arts' Council there has a newsletter, it's a quarterly newsletter. It goes to all members automatically, its probably a few thousand then that go out in addition to other donors who get copies automatically too and there is an email that goes out every week which is like a calendar of Arts events in the region, not just Dutchess county. That goes to all members and other people that want to be on the mailing list also. So those are the things that sustain public interest in what the Arts' Council is involved in and what we know about what is happening in the Arts around the county, and so Arts in the Mid-Hudson or Arts on the Hudson River is a program which each community on the Hudson River within a certain geographical area between Albany and Westchester have a day allotted to them to conduct kind of recreational and Arts type of activities on the banks of the Hudson River in their communities. And so these are things that migrate up and down the Hudson and that sustains a lot of public interest because there's nothing like going down to the River on a nice summer day and being able to buy some prints or something from LeRoy Neiman.
DA: Obviously, we are much newer at this than you guys are Brian, but one of the things we are currently working on is a website and the development of our own newsletter and brochure, which we hope to have completed by the end of this year. Certainly in the meantime if there are people who are interested in finding out more about the Orange County Arts' Council or about how they can get involved, they can certainly contact the Orange County Citizen's Foundation. That number is 845-469-9459 or they can certainly email me. That email address is ocnyartscouncil@hotmail.comand certainly I would love to hear from anybody that is interested in participating. I'll repeat that email address, it's a long one. It's ocnyartscouncil@hotmail.com.
GBM: Now if I were to want to get onto the Orange County Arts' Council website what would the address be?
DA: Actually there is a website right now, it's a temporary website which is
www.ocartscouncil.org. There are some pictures and some information about what's going on with us, but as I mentioned we will be developing a new much more resource intensive website which we hope to have up and running before the end of the year.
GBM: Dawn, thanks very much for being with us. It's been a real pleasure. Gary wanted to give you this calendar for 2008 from Jacobowitz & Gubits as a thank you gift for being here. Gary, thank you for being here.
GMS: Thank you Brian.
DA: Thank you very much.
Host: We would like to repeat those addresses for anyone interested in contacting the Orange County Arts' Council. The email address is ocnyartscouncil@hotmail.com. The website still being built is www.ocartscouncil.org. That's all the time we have for this presentation. If you have any questions that you'd like answered about Arts' Council activities in Orange or Dutchess counties, you can call either Gary Schuster or Brian Morgan direct at 845-778-2121. Just tell the operator you listened to Upfront and Legal, if you have a question for Gary or Brian. That's 845-778-2121. Join us again next Friday at 1:00 pm for another edition of Upfront and Legal and thanks for listening.
