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• As a Company Leaves Town, Arts Grants Follow  

For four decades, as New York’s arts scene flourished, the most reliable source of corporate funds for the city’s dance companies, theaters and art museums was the Philip Morris Companies, maker of the world’s most popular cigarette.

At first, some arts groups hesitated to take funds from a tobacco company. But most of them got over it, and now more than 200 organizations in New York, including many known for experimental work, receive a total of about $7 million every year from the company known for the last few years as the Altria Group.

That money is about to go away as Altria prepares to move its headquarters out of New York because of a corporate reorganization of its tobacco business.

The city's arts world is bracing for the money to run out. Arts groups as varied as the Urban Bush Women in Brooklyn and the Dance Theater Workshop in Manhattan are hustling to find other companies, hedge funds or real estate developers to replace Altria's grants. . . .

Nationally, Altria ranked 11th in corporate giving last year with about $200 million in cash and in-kind donations, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Besides plowing millions into the arts across the country, Altria has been a major contributor to domestic violence shelters, hunger programs and disaster relief.

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Our program is not about our products; it's about reputation. Creativity and innovation are some of our greatest attributes. What better way to reflect that than to support the arts?
Jennifer P. Goodale, Altria's vice president for contributions, on the company's corporate contributions program.

Here's what it was -- the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.
David Parsons, co-founder and artistic director of Parsons Dance, on a donation from Philip Morris in 1985 that gave his new dance company a much-needed "shot in the arm."

It is unlikely that Altria will be funding arts organizations in New York in the future because, as far as we know, there will be no Altria corporate contributions program, which is a result of the decentralization we've been working on over the past few years.
Jennifer P. Goodale, a former actress who is Altria's vice president for contributions, in an e-mail message to a reporter.