Some of the world’s most promising musicians, dancers and actors study at the Juilliard School in New York City. But like so many other students pursuing an elite education, they don’t always have the financial means to easily pay their way. For one family foundation that’s been backing the school since the 1980s, scholarship support has been a key means to give those students a leg up.
That grantmaker, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation, was recently honored at a February 5 celebration at the school, “A Benefit for Scholarship,” featuring an evening of music, dance and drama. The event marked the completion of the Jerome L. Greene Scholarship Challenge, in which 50 donors committed a combined $5 million that was matched by the foundation, generating $10 million in new endowed scholarships for Juilliard students.
Five months previously, Juilliard announced its drama program would be tuition free starting in the 2024–25 academic year. In a recent call, Juilliard President Damian Woetzel told me the challenge was part of an “ongoing story” about reducing financial barriers to access. “My tenure started about five years ago,” Woetzel said, “and while the support for scholarships has always been strong, there’s been an incredible amount of energy on becoming ever-more tuition-free over the last few years.”
Juilliard has a trusted partner in the Jerome L. Greene Foundation, which was established in 1978 by Jerome Greene (1906–1999), a Brooklyn-born attorney, real estate investor and philanthropist. The family foundation, which has four priority areas — arts, education, medicine and social justice — has disbursed over $500 million since its inception, including over $30 million in scholarships to more than 620 Juilliard students.
“The foundation wants to ensure that talent and dedication, not financial constraints, define a student’s journey as an artist,” the foundation’s president Chris McInerney said in an email to IP. “We want these extraordinary students to have the time, freedom and flexibility to explore their craft, grow, develop their own voice and flourish.”
Close to four decades of support
The consummate arts patron, Jerome Greene was a longtime member of Lincoln Center’s board of directors, served as chairman of the board of the Hirshhorn Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and was on the art advisory committee at the Jewish Museum in New York. He supported an array of New York City medical institutions, such as the Montefiore Medical Center and his alma mater, Columbia University.
The foundation’s relationship with Juilliard dates back to 1985, when Greene joined its board and contributed $1.6 million to establish its first endowment for scholarships in music, dance and drama. Greene remained on the board until his passing, after which the foundation continued to support Juilliard through additional scholarship contributions under the direction of his widow Dawn Greene.
In 2010, McInerney, who is Dawn Greene’s daughter, succeeded her as the foundation’s president and CEO. “I’ve continued this support since taking over the foundation from my mother,” said McInerney, who also sits on Juilliard’s board. “Scholarships strongly align with the foundation’s mission of promoting equitable access in the arts and education.”
At the end of 2022, the Jerome L. Greene Foundation had $645 million in net assets and disbursed 47 grants totaling $31 million. The largest grants flowed to Juilliard ($3.2 million), New York Public Radio ($3 million), the North Star Fund ($2.5 million), New York Community Trust ($2.1 million) and Echoing Green ($2 million), which supports fledgling social entrepreneurs.
Making the pitch
The seeds of the Jerome L. Greene Scholarship Challenge at Juilliard were planted in 2018 when the foundation found success getting donor buy-in for a similar matching scholarship program at Columbia Law School. “Through a 1-to-1 match on the naming of scholarships,” McInerney said, “we learned that there was a greater degree of success for this type of giving that allowed a group of people or a family to have a scholarship honoring someone they know: a loved one or student, a professor or significant person.”
The foundation took note of how the mechanics of the match galvanized support across the university community. “There is no better way for encouraging new donors to support scholarships than a matching grant,” McInerney said. “It truly motivates donors who might not otherwise give.”
Fast-forward to December 2021. McInerney got in touch with Woetzel and told him the foundation wanted to roll out a similar model at Juilliard. “In putting together the challenge grant,” McInerney said, “we wanted to ensure that the school has the flexibility to apply these funds to help students from all walks of life access the exceptional education Juilliard offers, without incurring financial burden.”
After McInerney presented her vision to Woetzel, the pair decided to scale it across Juilliard’s three divisions — music, dance and drama. Looking back, Woetzel was especially struck by the fact that the foundation matched grants in a time-limited window. “It was very important in terms of motivation,” he said. “It created this sense of ‘the time is now’ to make sure that everybody could have access to this level of education.”
With the architecture of the challenge in place, Woetzel and his team had to present prospective scholarship donors with a compelling pitch. “Like anything of this nature, it’s storytelling,” he said. “We started to ask, ‘What are we trying to accomplish? And how do we express it?’”
At an intuitive level, lessening students’ debt burden would incentivize aspiring musicians, dancers and actors to apply to Juilliard. But Woetzel didn’t take it for granted. Throughout the challenge, and both in conversations and through collateral like a brochure Woetzel showed me during our call, the school reminded prospective donors how their support would open doors not just for future performers, but also for graduates who pivot to production, writing and teaching, and “become part of the fabric of what makes our societies vibrant and meaningful.”
Donors were also drawn to the idea that scholarships would be endowed for perpetuity to benefit future students. “It’s saying, ‘This matters for the long term,’ and the idea that donors could make an investment in a way they never imagined was very powerful,” Woetzel said.
“There’s no such thing as a bad conversation”
None of this is to suggest Woetzel and his team didn’t hit a few roadblocks along the way. As readers know, fundraising is a highly personalized undertaking. Sometimes the stars align, but other times, not so much.
“Of course, it wasn’t the right time for some people,” he said, “and that was, of course, absolutely fine, because there are always other conversations to be had.” For Woetzel, the most important conversations involve the role of art in society and supporting the future of art through education. If participants can gain traction on those topics, “there’s no such thing as a bad conversation.”
The Greene Scholarship Challenge unfolded concurrently with Juilliard’s efforts to leverage philanthropic support to make its drama program tuition-free, and one could argue that by doing so, the school ran the risk of spreading its donors a bit too thin. But for Woetzel, “these things play together. It’s not a competition; it’s an incentivizing of belief.”
That perspective was vindicated last September when Juilliard announced its drama school would be tuition free in the 2024–25 academic year, which it achieved by combining existing scholarship funding with a matching challenge grant from theater producer and trustee Stephanie P. McClelland and her husband, Carter McClelland. The challenge was matched with a major gift from producer John Gore as well as gifts from the Jacques and Margot W. Kohn Foundation and several estates.
With the recent influx of support taken into account, 93% of Juilliard students now receive some form of financial aid and approximately 27% attend the school tuition-free. With help from the school’s supporters, Woetzel is working to see that this latter figure rises in the months and years ahead.
“Affordability in education is such an urgent issue,” he said. “And in artistic education specifically, we have to acknowledge that there’s that barrier to getting into the room, as it were, and then there’s what happens as you leave.”
