Initiative Overview

The Nonprofit Finance Fund, a national community-development financial institution, is administering this $4 million, six-year initiative. NFF provided an independent engineering audit of each participant’s primary facility. This information was then used to create a 20-year maintenance and systems-replacement plan and budget.

At the same time, NFF conducted in-depth, multiyear reviews of each organization’s finances to help them better understand what cash assets are available to deploy to their institutional needs, including a building reserve fund.    

Grantees are making monthly deposits to their building reserve accounts and Kresge is matching them through 2017. Deposit and match amounts were informed by NFF’s facility and financial studies. Withdrawals from these accounts are expected to coincide with each participant’s systems-replacement plan. 

The lessons learned from this initiative will be gathered into case studies and published on our website.

Participating Organizations

Children’s Museums
Boston Children’s Museum; Boston, Mass.
Children’s Museum of Houston; Houston, Texas
Children’s Museum of New Hampshire; Portsmouth, N.H.
Kohl Children’s Museum of Greater Chicago; Glenview, Ill.
The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum; St. Louis, Mo.
Madison Children’s Museum, Madison, Wis.
Providence Children’s Museum; Providence, R.I.

Community Schools of Art
Kaufman Center/Moses School for Music and Dance; New York, N.Y.
Macphail Center for Music; Minneapolis, Minn.
Merit School of Music; Chicago, Ill.
Music Conservatory of Westchester; White Plains, N.Y.
Music Institute of Chicago; Winnetka, Illinois
Neighborhood Music School; New Haven, Conn.
Rainey Institute, Cleveland, Ohio

Application Process

The cohort for this initiative is in place. We are not accepting new applications for this initiative.