In Wednesday’s (1/16) Huntsville Times (Alabama), Pat Ammons writes, “Huntsville’s a city known for its high-tech accomplishments, but one of the most enduringly successful organizations is all about the arts. For 51 years, the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra Guild has supported the orchestra by raising money and providing educational outreach, succeeding through tough economy times and when orchestras around the country are struggling. Just recently, in fact, the guild presented the symphony with a check for more than $254,000, its contribution from the money members raised in 2012. ‘It’s remarkable,’ Dan Halcomb, the HSO’s president and CEO said of the guild’s ongoing support. Since the time the guild formed in 1960, the organization’s members have volunteered more than 726,000 hours of service to the orchestra and raised more than $6 million to support the HSO. … The guild’s annual contribution is 14 percent of the HSO’s annual budget, which is $1.7 million this year, and it raises 30 percent of the contributed income. … Huntsville’s symphony guild is ‘off the charts’ in terms of fundraising, Jesse Rosen, the League of American Orchestra’s president and CEO, said in a phone conversation from the League’s offices in New York. … Rosen called volunteer guilds such as Huntsville’s an ‘indispensible’ part of an orchestra’s success.”
Posted January 17, 2013
