‘Culture matters here:’ Quad Cities Cultural Trust continues support for local humanities

Founded in 2007, the Quad Cities Cultural Trust is an endowment campaign aimed at protecting and growing the legacy of culture and art in the Quad-Cities.

Executive Director Jen Lewis-Snyder said the organization grew out of a passion for promoting the humanities in the region.

“This was a time in life, in the Quad-Cities specifically, where the nonprofit sector was really starting to boom,” she said.

In 2010, there were fewer than 1,000 nonprofits in the area, she said. In the 14 years since, that number has nearly tripled.

With so many ideas and opportunities for collaboration, however, comes daunting tasks for the major funders in the area. With big initiatives comes big accountability, with major employers getting inundated with requests to help on the health and human services side of things.

“On the cultural side, there really wasn’t a measurement or a mechanism in place,” Lewis-Snyder said, adding this prompted an idea for something new. “We know that culture is an economic driver. We know that if we want to compete with Chicago and Des Moines, we need to have some form of entertainment.”

Wanting to ensure culture was well-supported in the Quad-Cities, three key investors, the Bechtel Trusts, the John Deere Foundation and the Hubbell-Waterman Foundation, came together to form the Quad Cities Cultural Trust, starting with a $15 million endowment. The three partners agreed to portion the annual dividend income into deeply-rooted cultural amenities in the area: entertainment, public art and education.

The Figge Art Museum, Putnam Museum and Science Center, Quad City Symphony Orchestra, Common Chord and Quad City Botanical Center were all selected as partners to receive unrestricted grants.

That last part is key, Lewis-Snyder said, because it allows the organizations to spend the money how they see fit to best help their organization. The Cultural Trust investors decided to up the ante in 2008 and embarked on a campaign to increase the endowment to $30 million.

However, the financial crash of 2008 slowed those plans and the three individual investors continued to quietly fund the trust. By 2016 the economy evened out and the trust started looking at future projects once more.

“The board took a look at where we were compared to Chicago and Des Moines and (asked ourselves if) we were where we wanted to be,” Lewis-Snyder said.

At that time, the National Endowment for the Arts released a report saying the arts and culture sector contributed $804.2 billion, or 4.3%, of the nation’s GDP in 2016. 

“Our board doubled-down and said it is time to turn that original investment into more,” she said. 

The Cultural Trust launched a public campaign with a goal of raising $32 million by 2024. The sell itself wasn’t hard, she said. Funding the arts is a typically well-supported argument. But the elevator pitch of building on an endowment that was already well-established was more difficult to convince people of.

“Natural human instinct is to stop giving when others take care of it,” she said. “You need to evoke public pride to not only use the amenities, but see the value economically, educationally, personally, and invest in it.”

The board adjusted its strategy to include trustors with forever seats on the Cultural Trust board and manage the agreements. Since the investment of the original three, the board has also absorbed the Adler Theatre Fund.

But the financial goal was not raised just by corporate sponsors, Lewis-Snyder said. Of the funding, $12 million was donated thanks to hundreds of local donors and companies that believed in the mission and felt arts in the Quad-Cities were a worthy investment.

In the middle of campaigning, the trust continued to fund area projects. The trust helped advocate for city-led funding for the Putnam Museum, and took a hard look at other area arts organizations to ensure no one was left out.

That’s when a sixth organization, Quad City Arts, was brought into the fold. Locally, the organization is responsible for many public art displays around town, at the airport, the annual Chalk Fest and Festival of Trees every winter.

The public funding campaign went live in 2018 and the $32 million goal was met in just 18 months — right before the pandemic hit. The move not only boosted the Quad-Cities’ art scene, but had eyes turning in exactly the direction the trust was hoping.

“It really changed the game,” Lewis-Snyder said. “We became the region that was no longer looking to our left and our right … Now, we have Chicago and Des Moines calling us and saying, ‘How did everybody survive?'” 

Other cities have reached out for guidance, she said, especially after another milestone was reached this year. The Cultural Trust was able to reach $40 million in total assets this year with the help of new partners and has given out more than $16.5 million in grants since its inception in 2007.

The trust has been part of numerous projects in the area including the opening of the children’s garden inside the Quad City Botanical Center in 2014; helping the Figge secure funding to reach debt-free status by 2019 and pushing through the pandemic to maintain the arts and cultural impact in the area.

Lewis-Snyder emphasized there is always room at the table for more investment and big plans are in the works for the years to come. The Cultural Trust has decided it wants to be the leader in helping arts and culture thrive in the Quad-Cities, and it begins with collaboration.

“We are going to stand in the light and say to everyone what we’re doing,” she said. “And we’re going to say it with enthusiasm that we hope is infectious, because culture matters here. And it always will.”