Ripple EffectThe Complex and Consequential Life of a Gift
by Jeff Counts
In the last playbill, our season-long recognition of the Evelyn Rosenblatt Young Artist Award began with a look at the many musicians her family has hosted and honored over the years. We got to know a bit about the 2045-25 Award recipient Randall Goosby and spent time at a few imagined dinner parties with him and others from the list of past winners. Now it’s time to learn more about the philanthropy at the heart of this celebration.
This is a biography, not of a person but of a concept–in this case an incredible financial gift. As it was with those dinners in the previous article, a few of the scenes and circumstances that make up this life story will occur only in our minds. But don’t worry. The possibilities they exemplify are quite real. They happen all the time.
When Evelyn Rosenblatt turned 90 in 2000, her kids made another special contribution to the culture of Salt Lake City in her name. Their dad, Joseph, had just passed away in 1999 and, given both parents’ dedication to Utah Symphony (Evelyn was in the Guild, Joseph served on the Board of Directors), it was clear that a legacy gift to this flagship performing arts institution was in order. The Rosenblatt children and their partners – Norm and Nan Rosenblatt, Toby and Sally Rosenblatt, Steven and Martha Rosenblatt, and Mindy Rosenblatt and Evelyn Jacob–already knew how to do this. You see, the gift had forbears too, many of them, like the Rosenblatt Award for Excellence which was established in 1983 for honoring faculty at the University of Utah.
For the Young Artist Award, the Rosenblatt family’s charitable trust set up another endowment to ensure that the distribution of their funds would be evergreen so Utah Symphony could highlight young musicians of exceptional promise for many years. Why an endowment, you might ask? Because there is simply no better mechanism for encouraging longevity. An endowment fund, once it has been seeded with significant philanthropic dollars, can invest those dollars and provide dependable future dividends for the benefit of a designated arts company. And when it is well looked after by folks as dedicated as the Rosenblatt family, an endowment can theoretically extend its benevolence forever.
It’s important to point out that a gift like the one that started the Evelyn Rosenblatt Young Artist Award can inspire beyond its charter and offer a structural template for new initiatives both in and out of its presumed lane. In other words, the gift itself builds a reputation. Fundraisers and potential big donors may be aware of it, sure, but so are the rank-and-file patrons whose relationship to a non-profit is limited to the tickets it sells. For example, everyone who sees Randall Goosby play this season will know the name Evelyn Rosenblatt and many will, perhaps for the first time, understand that some of the families who care deeply about the culture of their city are willing to make transformative efforts for it. They might, these speculative, perceptive concertgoers of ours, even consider making a gift of their own.
Imagine also this oft-repeated scenario. The fundraising team at Utah Symphony | Utah Opera is building a campaign to create named positions within the orchestra or develop an annual instrument purchase fund for the percussion section (you would be shocked to learn how expensive their stuff can be). Whenever they approach a prospective donor about ideas like these, it is an enormous advantage to have a proof of concept in hand. A perfectly designed, gracefully maintained, and professionally stewarded example like the Evelyn Rosenblatt Young Artist Award not only offers the new donor a proven method to emulate, it also shows them that their own largesse would place them in some very impressive company.
To put this complicated web of potential in the simplest possible terms, the Rosenblatt family’s gift has, in addition to doing its own important work for young performers over the last 25 years, led to the creation of countless other meaningful relationships for Utah Symphony. Joseph and Evelyn’s children, and now the grandchildren who have enthusiastically taken up the mantle, did not likely predict or even intend this outcome, but that doesn’t matter. The gift, their gift, had a story of its own to tell.
A non-profit organization is a pond. The donations it receives are devotional stones thrown into the center. The ripples move outward, influencing other funders and kindred organizations, before they reach the shore and return back to the source to re-inspire those close to the original generosity. It is more than young performing artists of exceptional promise that Evelyn Rosenblatt’s name inspires today. Through the Young Artist Award, her great legacy reaches beyond Maurice Abravanel Hall and into the wider world of art as the life of this gift, barely getting started now at 25 years, continues to surprise us.
Thank you, Rosenblatt Family.
