Budget shortfall forces Austin Music Foundation to suspend operations

The Austin Music Foundation nonprofit group has suspended activity and laid off its employees in response to a budget shortfall of nearly $200,000 from its planned budget of just over $300,000. At least $85,000 of that shortfall is the result of AMF not receiving a Cultural Arts contract from the city for one of the few times in its 22-year history.

The group had been a regular recipient of contracts to provide workforce development and education programs to Austin musicians, with more than 1,000 artists per year receiving training at some level.

Its leaders had applied under the Cultural Arts Division’s new Thrive program, which had a minimum contract amount of $85,000 and was one of three programs created as a result of a yearslong restructuring of the contract process. Another $100,000 of the group’s budget shortfall came from the collapse of the Austin Gilgronis professional rugby team, which had been a partner beginning in 2021.

In recent years AMF had offered broad-audience educational panels, selective one-on-one consultations between young musicians and industry professionals, and an advanced artist development program that gave highly structured career advancement opportunities to six acts per year. It also offered training and resources to hopeful music industry entrepreneurs.

Jennifer Dugas, who was laid off as AMF’s executive director last week, said leaders were informed in February that the organization would not be receiving any funding from Thrive.

“The value of what we were offering to the community was well recognized historically through the Cultural Arts funding, and when the new guidelines were released, I think we were cautiously optimistic,” she said. “Based on conversations with city staff, our understanding is we not only met the new guidelines but exceeded them, I think in comparison maybe to some other organizations. We certainly were not putting all of our eggs in the one city basket, but based on historic funding and the value and impact that we bring to the community and us meeting all of those guidelines above and beyond, we thought we had a pretty good chance.”

In response to an inquiry about the Thrive funding decision, a city spokesman said: “It’s important to note that the allocation of Cultural Arts funding is part of a highly competitive process; funding is not guaranteed when applying. Applications undergo rigorous assessment by an external panel of arts experts. The panelists individually review and provisionally score the applications before engaging in a collective discussion.

“In the specific case of the Austin Music Foundation, they applied for funding for the Thrive program, which was the first to launch after the completion of the three-year Cultural Funding Review Process. This program proved to be highly competitive, with only 25% of the 145 applicants ultimately securing funding. Regrettably, the Austin Music Foundation was not among the recipients in this category.”

In addition to previous Cultural Arts funding, AMF also received a one-time three-year contract for workforce development that provided $75,000 per year as part of the Music and Creative Ecosystem Omnibus Resolution. That contract ended in September 2021.

Nikki Rowling, a co-founder of AMF and current board chair, said the hiatus means there is no comprehensive, widely available career development training for local musicians.

“All the free stuff we’ve been able to provide in terms of seminars and panels and workshops has been at least partially supported by those contracts with the city,” she said. “We actually haven’t been told why we were not awarded funding this year, just that we were turned down, which came as a shock to us because we met every single eligibility criteria in the new contract format.” Rowling said AMF plans to maintain its office space in the South Shore District apartment building on Riverside Drive through the end of its lease next year, with “occasional activations possible.”

A fundraiser to help keep the organization from completely closing is planned for Sept. 20 at the Sign Bar, with replica signs from the Continental Club and Club DeVille among the handful of items planned for auction.

Dugas said if AMF is able to reorganize, it will likely do so in a way that is less reliant on government funding.

“We have learned a lot over the years about being vulnerable to the need for government funding … I certainly pushed it with the board and we were all in agreement that all nonprofits have to diversify their revenue sources,” she said. “The multi-year strategic partnerships that we’ve been trying to grow and that I’ve been working on for a while, I’d be more aggressive with that.”

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