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VisArts Receives $75,000 in Grants for Youth Outreach Programming

December 23, 2016 News

The Visual Arts Center of Richmond recently received three grants that total $75,000 to support the organization’s youth outreach programming. Grantors include the Dominion Foundation, the Memorial Foundation for Children and the Altria Companies Employee Community Fund.

The Dominion Foundation recently awarded VisArts a $35,000 grant specifically to support Art After School, Make Space and ENGAGE, three programs that provide hands-on arts education and creative outlets, free of charge, to Richmond youth.   The foundation is particularly interested in providing educational experiences for young people, and arts education is deemed essential to educating and empowering the whole child.

The grant was part of a nearly $1 million-dollar package the Dominion Foundation distributed in the Richmond metro region. Among the grantees were the Boy Scouts of America Heart of Virginia Council, Children’s Museum of Richmond, Junior Achievement, NextUp, the Peter Paul Development Center and SPARC. The Dominion Foundation has supported VisArts for several decades, and has specifically supported youth programming since 2003. This gift is their largest VisArts youth programming gift to date.

VisArts also received a $25,000 grant from the Memorial Foundation for Children. This is the foundation’s 13th grant to VisArts since 1990 and its largest gift to the organization since 2004. The foundation is dedicated to supporting non-profits that help all children reach their potential, and VisArts does this by providing arts education that fosters children’s confidence in their own ideas and creative capacities.

The Altria Companies Employee Community Fund awarded VisArts a $15,000 grant. The ACECF is unique in that it pools the contributions of Altria employees and allows them to participate in the company’s fundraising and grant-making process. In the 15 years since the ACECF was founded, the fund has awarded 84 grants, totaling $2,225,000, in Virginia. VisArts has received funding in 13 of those grant cycles, receiving a total of $273,560 for its youth outreach programming.