Herzfeld Puts Forth $50,000 Challenge Grant for Creative Alliance Milwaukee Initiatives
Six-Week Time Period to Raise Funds
MILWAUKEE – November 3, 2015 –The Herzfeld Foundation has provided a $50,000 challenge grant to leverage additional investors and foundations to support initiatives of Creative Alliance Milwaukee (CAM), including The Spot 4MKE, a placemaking project of nonprofit Creative Alliance Milwaukee at 5th and Wisconsin Avenue. Contributions committed to support CAM through December 15th will be matched 1:1 (up to $50,000 total from Herzfeld Foundation). Creative Alliance Milwaukee stands to receive up to a maximum of $100,000 if the challenge amount is fully matched – CAM intends to use the challenge grant to continue activation of the lot. The matching grant announcement comes after The Spot 4MKE demonstrated successful activities and creative enhancements to a forlorn surface parking lot over the past six months in a key area of Westown that is located across from the Downtown Hilton and the Wisconsin Center. The Spot 4MKE recently received a lease extension for the next 6-12 months from the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee to continue.
“We are thrilled that Creative Alliance Milwaukee has been offered a challenge grant from the Herzfeld Foundation that will further the community building that began with our investment through Heart of the Community,” said Laura Hoagland, Sr. Specialist Community Engagement from Southwest Airlines. “At last week’s milestone celebration we got to experience the true spirit of Placemaking as people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, and all parts of town came together and connected with one another. We hope that residents and other organizations will continue to support The Spot 4MKE as it becomes one of the great public spaces in Milwaukee.”
The Spot 4MKE is a project of the Southwest Airlines’ Heart of the Community grant program (announced in April 2015) providing $100,000 in seed funding to bring activities for community building on the site to Creative Alliance Milwaukee. There was an additional $100,000 value providing in-kind creative placemaking consulting services through Project for Public Spaces, headquartered in New York City for The Spot 4MKE. Southwest Airlines, headquartered in Dallas funded six cities in the Heart of Community Grant project in 2015 including The Spot 4MKE.
“We are reaching out to invite other funders to share in and help support our continued success in creating ‘surprise and delight’ in downtown Milwaukee,” notes Maggie Kuhn Jacobus, President and CEO of Creative Alliance Milwaukee. “We’re hoping that they will be inspired to join Southwest Airlines and the Herzfeld Foundation locally to help keep the project rolling and downtown Milwaukee activated.”
About Creative Alliance Milwaukee: a nonprofit organization focused on economic development initiatives to link, leverage, promote and grow the creative industries in the greater Milwaukee region. CAM exists to drive this economic growth and potential by serving as a catalytic hub to leverage applied creativity in education, commerce and culture. By linking and leveraging the creative community—those Milwaukee organizations, individuals and companies whose products and services originate in artistic, cultural, creative and/or aesthetic content—the entire sector benefits from synergy, building connections and business opportunities together, and job creation. See www.creativealliancemke.org & www.TheSpot4MKE.org
NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. It has not been verified for its accuracy or completeness.
