ADVOCACY

Work for Art keeps working—and growing!

FROM THE CRAYONS that come with a kids meal to the radio playlists you’ll hear in each store, local Burgerville restaurants feel a little artsier than other fast-food outlets. That’s no fluke. In fact, the company’s cashiers and milkshake makers and sustainability planners are an arts-supporting lot, and have helped Burgerville achieve the highest number of employee donors of any Work for Art campaign.

Work for Art is RACC’s workplace giving program that engages 73 companies across the region, giving employees an opportunity to support arts and culture, most commonly through their paychecks. Burgerville’s president and CEO, Jeff Harvey, is leading the charge as the honorary chair of the seventh annual campaign, which runs through June, 2013.

Last year’s honorary chair, PGE Foundation president Carole Morse, helped Work for Art raise a record-setting total of $823,693. Portland General Electric remains a perennial top campaign, along with NW Natural, The Standard, and OHSU—all of which maintain an active presence in the arts and culture community. NW Natural invites Work for Art funded groups to perform at employee events year-round. The Standard encourages employees to spend time volunteering, and many of them choose to do so with groups funded by Work for Art. The connection between arts and healing is not lost on employees at OHSU—their children’s hospitals in particular welcome arts activities for patients.

Employees and other donors who opt to give at least $60 ( just $5 a month) get a lot in return, including an Arts Card, which provides two-for-one tickets to performances by 65 of the very groups that benefit from the money being raised. “We have more and more donors with Arts Cards every year,” says program manager Kathryn Jackson, adding that the cards are especially prized by families who want to expose their children to arts experiences, which have become less present in schools.

The Arts Card is one aspect that sets Work for Art apart from similar community funds. Another benefit that donors appreciate is that a coalition of city and county governments and private entities matches each gift dollar-for-dollar, and all of the proceeds go to arts and culture groups in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties. When a company signs on with the program, Work for Art brings artists into the workplace for a campaign kickoff event, and sometimes businesses engage these artists for leadership meetings and other corporate events as well. This ongoing relationship gives workers a glimpse of services that their donations fund, and the performances they can attend with their Arts Card if they become donors.

As honorary chair, Harvey isn’t just drumming up support among his own employees. Everyone who enters a Burgerville runs the risk of exposing themselves to art—and to Work for Art— through various events and promotions. One such promotion, called Feed the Arts, gives a percentage of a spring day’s sales from all 39 Burgerville restaurants directly to the Work for Art Community fund. Who knows? The arts might prove as addictive as Burgerville’s Walla Walla onion rings—to satisfy the craving with an Arts Card of their own, diners might ask their own employers to participate.