Arts relief in the stimulus bill

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last: it includes $15 billion to help them weather a crisis that has closed theaters and silenced halls.

That is from the NYT, here is the key shift in relative prices:

But the leaders of some large nonprofit cultural organizations worried that the way the bill is structured — giving priority to organizations that lost very high percentages of their revenue before considering the rest — could put them at the back of the line for grants, since they typically get a significant portion of revenues through donations.

I would say the priorities here are the right ones, as it is easier for donors to make up on the giving side than it is for customers to make up on the patronage side, if only because performances are some mix of not allowed and highly risky to attend.  Making a donation, however, never has been easier and arguably there is an implicit heightened subsidy to donations, given that other fun ways to spend your money are hard to come by.

Comments

Comments for this post are closed