In late 1996, the Cleveland Foundation Civic Study Commission on the Performing Arts issued a warning that the stability and permanence of cultural assets throughout the seven-county region were under threat. In response, the foundation teamed in 1997 with the George Gund Foundation and the Cleveland Cultural Coalition to convene the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture (CPAC), a community-wide group of committed arts leaders, practitioners and advocates, to develop a regional strategic plan to address the sector’s needs.

With support from the two foundations, CPAC commissioned unprecedented research on the value of arts and culture to the regional economy. Published in 2000, the research documented that the sector annually contributed $1.3 billion to the local economy and that arts and cultural organizations employed about 3,700 full-time equivalent staffers, who earned salaries totaling more than $105 million.

CPAC simultaneously led a two-year engagement process in which more than 7,000 northeastern Ohio residents expressed their views on how to more effectively connect people to arts and culture, make that sector a partner in neighborhood, community and regional development, and secure financial and other resources needed to sustain and grow the sector.

Under the leadership of Thomas Schorgl, CPAC became a nonprofit organization charged with carrying out the community’s strategic plan. Among CPAC’s many subsequent accomplishments, none was more critical than its championship of public financing of the arts and culture, an endeavor endorsed by a $300,000 Cleveland Foundation grant in 2003 (see video).

At the dawn of the new millennium, Cuyahoga County had among the lowest levels of public support for the sector of any peer community. CPAC initiated conversations with the county commissioners that led to their agreement to place on the 2004 ballot a joint economic development and arts and culture issue that would have provided the latter sector with $10 million annually via a property tax. Issue 31 failed by a slim margin.

CPAC rallied county officials and state legislators around a new funding plan, which required the Ohio General Assembly to create a special-assessment district for arts and culture in Cuyahoga County. Issue 18, which called for a 10-year increase in the cigarette excise tax to fund the district, was placed on the ballot in 2006. Thanks to the hard work of CPAC’s dedicated corps of arts advocates, this time voters approved the funding plan.

Today, Cuyahoga County’s arts and cultural organizations receive public monies for operations and programs, awarded annually in a competitive application process. To date, $112 million has been distributed to 237 organizations, large and small. Each year, Cuyahoga Arts & Culture, the county agency that has assumed responsibility for inspiring and strengthening the community through judicious investment of the excise tax funds, also presents $20,000 fellowships to 20 individual artists whose work has enriched the quality of life here.

Cuyahoga County is now almost without peer in providing a high level of public funding to maintain the vibrancy of the arts and cultural assets within its jurisdiction. In turn, public support has contributed to the strengthening of the arts and culture sector as an economic driver. The 182 nonprofits that received public funds from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture in 2011 employed more than 8,700 people and accounted for more than $286 million annually in direct spending, including more than $140 million in salaries.