NEW YORK – Philanthropy isn't so different from theater for Tony Award-winner Brian Stokes Mitchell.
“Life is a collaborative art,” explained Mitchell, one of Broadway’s preeminent leading men for more than two decades and a leader who steered the industry's support of performing arts professionals as the longtime chair of The Entertainment Community Fund. “It’s about people working together to make something impossible happen.”
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And, just as a stage production requires the combined talents of celebrated actors and behind-the-scenes stagehands across professions and socioeconomic statuses, Mitchell finds there are “all kinds of ways” for everyone to lend a helping hand. He brought that message Tuesday to Town & Country's annual Philanthropy Summit, where fellow stars John Leguizamo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jonathan Groff and Celia Keenan-Bolger emphasized that the current moment asks everyone to donate at least something of their time, talent or treasure.
The lifestyle magazine cast the stakes in stark terms with year-end “giving season” fast approaching: between the Trump administration's vast cuts to social services grants and recent Bank of America findings that the share of households who give charitably is declining, staff wrote, the onus “is on an ever shrinking number of us.”
Mitchell would know a thing or two about living philanthropically: he brought joy to his New York City neighborhood during the early pandemic shutdowns with simple nightly serenades from his apartment window and became a co-founding member of Black Theatre United when 2020's racial justice movement brought new attention to Broadway’s lack of diversity.
“Wherever you look, all over the world, everything seems to be going a little bit crazy,” Mitchell said. “People feel very off centered and out of phase, and they’re not able to find their own happy part. And I think the easiest, quickest way to do that is to help others and give to people that are less fortunate.”
The summit highlighted business' responsibility to alleviate stress during such an uncertain time for the nonprofit sector. Companies are uniquely positioned to rally employees and consumers around charitable causes through workplace giving programs and point-of-sale nonprofit partnerships, a panel of corporate philanthropists told the audience at Hearst Tower.
Shortly after the 2008 financial crisis plunged the world into a recession, Carol Hamilton pushed L’Oréal's luxury brands to raise millions of dollars for UNICEF's safe water efforts. Now, fresh off retiring from her position as L’Oréal's U.S. president of acquisitions, she said she is rallying her former beauty industry colleagues to support a new UNICEF initiative empowering girls to shape national policies and tackle issues such as gender-based violence.
Hamilton said hers is an example of corporate giving's “force multiplier." At Napa Valley conferences and book launches, she said she has garnered interest from other cosmetics leaders who trust L’Oréal's legitimacy when it comes to philanthropy.
“There's, I think, more willingness to support the cause I'm creating because it seems to have legs and credibility,” Hamilton said. “I didn't just leave L’Oréal and say, ‘Oh, I want to become philanthropic. It seems like a good thing to do.’”
The summit also elevated Harlem's National Black Theatre as a model for responsible public-private commitments to once-disinvested communities. National Black Theatre CEO Sade Lythcott is redeveloping the historic 125th Street space into a multi-disciplinary cultural arts center that she hopes will become the country's premiere destination for Black storytelling. The 21-story facility, which is set to stage its first performances in 2027, will provide both a theater complex and affordable housing for artists.
Lythcott's project partner is Dasha Zhukova Niarchos, founder of a real estate development company called Ray and wife of Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos III. Speaking Tuesday, the two women emphasized that development should protect culture instead of displacing it. They plan to do just that by building an ecosystem where Black artists can live, work and serve the surrounding community.
The National Black Theatre's 2022 production of Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Fat Ham” was its first to transfer to Broadway, Lythcott said, proving the value of diverse stories to midtown Manhattan's iconic theater district. With her theater company's new home in Harlem, just $14 million away from reaching its fundraising goal, she hopes to show that philanthropy and business can “do well by doing good" together.
“There is no community, there is no neighborhood, there is no wealth without a rooted sense of belonging and being," Lythcott said. "What arts and culture does is really hold your hand and become a north star to how we connect with each other — across generations, across economic backgrounds, across ethnicities.”
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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.