Feature Stories

The Hewlett Challenge: An Historic Opportunity

San Francisco Ballet Awarded a $5 Million Grant from the Hewlett Foundation
Grant Establishes Endowment for New Works

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has awarded San Francisco Ballet a $5 million grant to create an endowment for new works. San Francisco Ballet will use the grant as a matching gift to raise the remaining $5 million of the $35 million endowment campaign, Performing at the Pinnacle.

“We are grateful to the William and Flora Hewlett for this remarkable gift—one of the largest in San Francisco ballet’s history,” said San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson. “New works are essential to the continued vitality of the Company as well as the art form. With almost 100 new works and acquisitions by San Francisco Ballet in the past decade, this grant, coupled with our existing new works endowment, is an investment in our standing as one of the world’s most inventive and acclaimed ballet companies.”

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1966 to help solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. The Foundation concentrates its resources in education, environment, global development, performing arts, philanthropy, and population, and makes grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the nation’s largest grant making foundations with assets of approximately $8 billion. It has supported San Francisco Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet School for more than three decades.

“The San Francisco Ballet indisputably is one of the jewels of Bay Area culture,'” said Paul Brest, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. “It’s a genuine pleasure for the foundation to be able to help secure its future in the new century.”

San Francisco Ballet is in the final phase of a $35 million endowment drive, the Performing at the Pinnacle Campaign. The Ballet has raised $30 million through October 31, 2006. The Hewlett Foundation’s grant will match “dollar-for-dollar” all new or increased contributions to the Pinnacle Campaign through June 30, 2008, up to $5 million.

The successful completion of the Pinnacle Campaign will bring the Ballet’s endowment to the $100 million level. At this size, the endowment will generate dependable ongoing funding for a wide range of artistic initiatives such as commissioning new works, acquiring Company premieres, and touring. It will also support the San Francisco Ballet School and the Ballet’s arts education programming in the community. Most importantly, it will help ensure that San Francisco Ballet remains at the forefront of its art form.

Reaching the $100 million endowment mark will also create an endowment assets-to-operating expenses ratio of three to one — a benchmark established by the Ford Foundation to indicate a truly financially sound institution. The Ford Foundation, based on more than three decades of research, recommends that institutions like San Francisco Ballet maintain an endowment between two and five times their annual operating expenses. At this proportion, endowment income will support a meaningful percentage of an organization’s annual budget.

For more information, see the Performing at the Pinnacle Campaign page or contact Thomas W. Flynn, director of development, at 415.553.4605 or tflynn@sfballet.org.

Images top to bottom: Helgi Tomasson rehearses The Fifth Season with Sarah Van Patten and Gonzalo Garcia (©Erik Tomasson); Yuan Yuan Tan and Yuri Possokhov in Helgi Tomasson's 7 for Eight (© Erik Tomasson).