Great Give 2015!!! What MFA does with the money!

For the past two years, MFA has participated in “The Great Give” a 24-hour fund-a-thon sponsored by the Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County. Nonprofits in Anne Arundel County compete for cash prizes by getting a lot of donors to make small gifts in support of their favorite nonprofits.

And we’ve been VERY successful. 

For the past two years, MFA has been the “small nonprofit with the most donors” – a designation that has a $10,000 prize attached to it. With $11,000 in prize money and $11,000 given by 478 donors, The Great Give 2014 was very successful for MFA.

So, what did MFA do with this money?

We kept our doors open for 363 days. We hung more than 1,000 pieces of art on the walls of Circle Gallery and exhibited another 1,000 in other galleries in Maryland. We worked with more than 5,000 artists to get their work out there.

And we hired Mia. 

Last year donations to The Great Give helped MFA create a fellowship to give someone pursuing arts management their first job in the field. We hired Mia Nardini in June 2014. Since then Mia has answered your questions, helped you with the online entry system, coordinated shipping, designed signage for exhibits, installed wall tags, worked with customers and processed sales.

Oh – and she’s redesigning our website…but more about that later!

In all – Mia has made your experience with MFA easier, effortless and hopefully – trouble free. The Great Give 2014 made Mia possible. Mia will be leaving us the end of June to pursue her career as a designer.

So now we want to fund Hannah Sturm. Hannah is a local young woman interested in starting her arts management career. She graduated from St. Mary’s College summa cum laude in May 2014 and found her way to MFA in October. We’d like to make her position full time and give her an MFA Fellowship for the year.

So, we need you to Give $15 in ’15…so we can continue the MFA Fellowship and help Hannah help you – and other artists and art enthusiasts in Maryland.

Can you help? Giving is online and will start at 6 pm May 5 and continue until 6 pm May 6.  During that time, we want you to go online and give $15 in support of MFA. Don’t worry – we’ll send you LOTS of emails to make sure you know what to do. And we want you to tell your friends to give too…not just because MFA brings great art created by current artists to Maryland and not just because visual art is important to the community but also because of Hannah.

Hannah is depending on you.