How You Can Give Back to Theaters Everywhere This #GivingTuesday
Donate today to organizations like BC/EFA, The Actors Fund, TDF, EdTA and so many more!
By: Team BWW Nov. 30, 2021
Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday have come and gone. While you're focused on finding the perfect holiday gifts for your loved ones, consider giving back a little this year. #GivingTuesday is an international day of global generosity, and there's no better time to think about how you can do good.
Need some inspiration? Check out these dozens of arts-related organizations that you can give back to today!
Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights Aids
Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS is one of the nation's leading industry-based HIV/AIDS fundraising and grant-making organizations. They fund the social service work of The Actors Fund and award grants to AIDS service organizations nationwide. This Giving Tuesday, they are aiming to raise funds for 80,000 healthy meals for people across the country affected by COVID-19, HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses.
The Actors Fund
The Actors Fund is a national human services organization here to meet the needs of our entertainment community with a unique understanding of the challenges involved in a life in the arts. Services include emergency financial assistance, affordable housing, health care and insurance counseling, senior care, secondary career development and more.
Actors' Equity Foundation
The Actors' Equity Foundation - a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization - has remained steadfast in its mission to support the professional theatre community, from emerging artists to seasoned vets, while promoting and investing in the theatre and the performing arts. The Foundation carries out its theatrical mission by giving grants to over 150 nonprofit theatres across the nation annually and to agencies and institutions serving the arts community, including AIDS and health care programs, diversity initiatives and career transition. The Foundation also offers workshops and seminars for the professional development of performing artists.
Dramatists Guild Foundation
DGF provides necessary funds to writers for the stage facing emergency circumstances. They also bestow funds upon writers and theaters that challenge, protect, and develop the craft. Through their intensive development program, an in-school program, and a national education program, they ensure that writers have access to free, quality education on the craft of writing. They offer writers a fully furnished multi-purpose space in NYC that they can use completely free of charge.
Deaf West
Committed to innovation, collaboration, training, and activism, Deaf West is the artistic bridge between the Deaf and hearing worlds. Founded in Los Angeles in 1991, Deaf West engages artists and audiences in unparalleled theater and media experiences inspired by Deaf culture and the expressive power of sign language, weaving ASL with spoken English to create a seamless ballet of movement and voice.
Theatre Development Fund
TDF is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to bringing the power of the performing arts to everyone. TDF sustains live theatre and dance by engaging and cultivating a broad and diverse audience and eliminating barriers to attendance.
TDF envisions a world where the transformative experience of attending live theatre and dance is essential, relevant, accessible and inspirational.
American Theatre Wing
American Theatre Wing invests in brave work, supports creative growth, and celebrates excellence to bring diverse stories to our national culture through theatre. American Theatre Wing has spent a century using theatre to advance human experience, empathy and cultural growth like never before.
The Broadway League
The Broadway League is the national trade association for the Broadway industry. Our 700-plus members include theatre owners and operators, producers, presenters, and general managers in North American cities, as well as suppliers of goods and services to the commercial theatre industry. Each year, League members bring Broadway to more than 30 million people in New York and more than 200 cities across the U.S. and Canada.
Educational Theatre Association
The mission of the Educational Theatre Association (EdTA) is to shape lives through theatre education. EdTA honors student achievement in theatre, supports teachers by providing professional resources, and influences public opinion that theatre education is essential for building life skills.
Local 802 AFM, The Musicians' Emergency Relief Fund
They are the Associated Musicians of Greater New York, American Federation of Musicians Local 802, the largest local union of professional musicians in the world. They unite to fight for the common interests of all musicians by advancing industry standards that dignify our labor and honor and enrich our art. They seek to organize a community of all musicians and aspiring musicians, and we reach out to all who share our interests and our passion. They are committed to upholding the integrity of live musical performance and to advancing the vital role of music in education, and in the economic, cultural and social life of our community and beyond. They advocate for economic and social justice for musicians and for society as a whole.
American Federation of Musicians
80,000 musicians comprise the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM). They perform in orchestras, backup bands, festivals, clubs and theaters-both on Broadway and on tour. AFM members also make music for films, TV, commercials and sound recordings. As the largest union of musicians in the world, they have the power to make the music industry work for musicians.
American Guild of Musical Artists
They are the labor organization that represents the artists who create America's operatic, choral, and dance heritage. Performing artists live to perform. But their talents, their skill and the beauty they create won't necessarily pay the rent, put food on the table or guarantee the necessities of life. Without forceful advocacy and defense of their rights, artists may be vulnerable to exploitation or illegal discrimination. They need protection.
Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation
Stage Directors and Choreographers Workshop Foundation (SDCF) exists to foster, promote and develop the creativity and craft of stage directors and choreographers. SDCF's goals are to provide opportunities to practice the crafts of directing and choreography; to gather and disseminate craft and career information; to promote the profession to emerging talent; to provide opportunities for exchange of knowledge among directors and choreographers; to increase the awareness of the value of directors' and choreographers' work, and to convene around issues affecting theatre artists. Because the work can often feel isolating, and these career paths can feel inaccessible to emerging artists, SDCF events and programs are designed to offer access, opportunity and community to directors and choreographers at all levels of career.
Black Theatre Coalition
Black Theatre Coalition is a non-profit organization dedicated to reshaping the working ecosystem for those who have been marginalized by systemically racist and biased ideology in the job space.
Broadway Advocacy Coalition
Founded in 2016 by members of the Broadway community as a direct response to the nation's pandemic of racism and police brutality, Broadway Advocacy Coalition (BAC) has since grown into a Tony Award-winning organization uniting artists with legal experts and community leaders to have a lasting impact on policy issues including criminal justice reform, education equity, and liberation within the theatrical industry.
Broadway for Racial Justice
Broadway for Racial Justice is fighting for racial justice and equity by providing immediate resources, assistance, and amplification for BIPOC in the Broadway and Theatrical community at-large. In doing so, BFRJ helps to create safe spaces throughout the theatre community for creativity and artistry to thrive.
Black Theatre United
Help BTU to influence widespread reform and combat systemic racism by donating. Black Theatre United harnesses the power of its collective voice to create substantive change within the theatre industry and throughout our country.
National Asian Artists Project
NAAP is a community of artists, educators, administrators, community leaders, and professionals. It is a not-for-profit organization that recognizes the need to build bridges between the work of artists of Asian descent, and the many communities that the work can serve, from underserved primary school students to seasoned arts patrons.
National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London, known as The National Theatre, is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues.
Motion Picture & Television Fund
Motion Picture & Television Fund is an organization that offers assistance and care to those in the motion picture and television industries with limited or no resources. Its mission is to enrich the lives of people in the Southern California entertainment community by evolving to meet their health and human services needs.
Roundabout Theatre Company
Roundabout Theatre Company is a not-for-profit organization. They produce familiar and lesser-known plays and musicals with the ability to take artistic risk as only a not-for-profit can; discover talented playwrights and provide them long-term artistic support to contribute to the future of the theatrical canon; reduce the barriers-financial, physical and cultural-that can inhibit theatergoing, and they collaborate with a diverse team of artistsi?? to identify programming for consideration. They build transformational education experiencesi?? that enhance teacher practice, deepen student learning, and ignite the futures of young people through career training and placement; and capture and archive over five decades of production history as an open resource for artists, scholars, and our community.
A BroaderWay
A BroaderWay Foundation (ABW) was created in 2010 by Idina Menzel, Taye Diggs, and a passionate group of artists, activists and social workers with a basic goal - amplifying the power of young women through the arts.
The Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is a vibrant home for the most creative and talented singers, conductors, composers, musicians, stage directors, designers, visual artists, choreographers, and dancers from around the world. The Met is reportedly the US' largest performing arts organization.
Rosie's Theater Kids
Eighty percent of our students come from low-income families, and most of them must overcome severe disadvantages to realize their dreams. RTKids is dedicated to bringing music, movement, and a greater love for learning into the life of every child it reaches - without charging them a penny.
Covenant House
Covenant House empowers young people to overcome homelessness and trafficking by providing them with safe housing, food and clothing, and relentless support. In 31 cities and counting across the United States, Latin America, and Canada, young people are finding hope, strengthening their resilience, and making progress towards their goals with the help of Covenant House's continuum of care, which includes job training, education opportunities, legal aid, health care, and mental health counseling as well as birthday parties, movie nights, and community meetings.
The Trevor Project
The Trevor Project is the world's largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) young people. Together, we can make sure that LGBTQ young people who need support nationwide know they are not alone. The Trevor Project's mission is to be there for every single one.
Maestra
MAESTRA provides support, visibility, and community to the women and nonbinary people who make the music in the musical theater industry. The organization's initiatives include monthly educational seminars, mentorship programs, technical skills workshops, networking events, and online resources and partnerships that aim to promote equality of opportunity and to address the many historical disadvantages and practices that have limited women and nonbinary composers and musicians in the musical theater.
The Lilly Awards
The Lilly Awards Foundation is a 501c3 non-profit whose mission is to celebrate the work of women in the theater and promote gender parity at all levels of theatrical production. The non-profit is named for Lillian Hellman, a pioneering American playwright who famously said "You need to write like the devil and act like one when necessary."
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