San Francisco Girls Chorus
For General Operating Support
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Amount$165,000
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Program
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Date Awarded3/22/2010
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Term36.0 Months
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Type of SupportGeneral Support/Organization
Strategies
Overview
Founded in 1978 The San Francisco Girls Chorus (SFGC) currently engages 400 girls age 6-18 in its after school choir programs and, as a featured performance at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration attests, it is one of the most artistically accomplished and renown youth choirs in the country. The organization demands a lot of the girls who audition and then are accepted into its multi-tiered music education and performance programs. Every singer attends classes 2-4 times a week after school and the teenagers in the highest level chorus perform throughout the year with the region’s foremost arts organizations including the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera and other Hewlett grantees including Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Joe Goode Dance troupe. The students learn to sing a diverse repertoire and have released recordings of their work in a variety of musical traditions and genres. Over the past grant period the SFGC successfully developed an in-school music program in one San Francisco elementary school and with renewed support will expand this program to two schools in the East Bay. The company, which owns its own rehearsal facility and rents out office and practice space to several other arts organizations, is in strong financial shape and will use renewed support to grow its board and continue to raise its visibility as one of the world’s premier youth choruses by touring more frequently around the country and internationally as well.
About the Grantee
Grantee Website
www.sfgirlschorus.org
Address
44 Page Street, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA, 94102-5989, United States
Grants to this Grantee
for Board development
The San Francisco Girls Chorus, a Hewlett Foundation grantee since 1991, will engage a consultant for a 12 month period to work with the organization’s governance committee chair, executive director and incoming board president to carry forward a goal of the the company’s strategic plan to better align the capacity of the board with the current and upcoming needs of the organization. The SF Girls Chorus has experienced a great deal of transition in its recent past - a new artistic director, a capital campaign and five executive directors in five years. Amidst all this turmoil the organization has been growing the numbers of children in its after-school arts programs and achieving greater acclaim nationally and internationally as evidenced by a $600,000 audience development award from the Wallace Foundation and a performance at Senator Dianne Feinstein’s request at the Capitol on the occasion of President Barack Obama’s inauguration. The SF Girls Chorus has worked with a consultant during 2008 on a strategic plan and recognized that the ad-hoc assignment of responsibilities and the ‘grass-roots’ orientation of the board will not allow it to become the world-class performance ensemble it aspires to be. With Organizational Effectiveness support the SF Girls Chorus will re-engage a consultant already familiar with the organization, its staff and stakeholders to coach board members on how to structure and manage the Governance Committee, how to assess weaknesses on the current board and then recruit and better train new board members to address those needs, and to provide follow up to staff on working more effectively and efficiently with the board.
