Actor Fund becomes community entertainment fund, changes name for 140 years

The Actors Foundation is now a community entertainment foundation, the 140-year-old organization announced Monday night during an annual bilateral gala.

Foundation President and Tony Award-winning actor Brian Stokes Mitchell broke the news at the simultaneous ceremony and fundraiser, which raised a long-standing record $1.7 million for the organization. Several industry guests attended Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles and the Marriott Marquis in New York for the announcements, including Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster, Alex Newell, LL Cool J, Chandra Wilson, Amanda Klots, Kenny Leon and Harris. Yulin, Edmund Donovan and Paramount CEO Brian Robbins.

“It’s a new name and a new look, with the same mission,” Mitchell told the crowd. “We recognize technicians, cameramen, set designers, writers, musicians, stage directors, actors and thousands of others who work in film, television, radio, music, theatre, dance and opera. All of them contribute to the cultural activity of our country. We appreciate you. We support them. And the bottom is here for all of them.”

The name change comes a month before the foundation’s 140th anniversary in June. “Since 1882, the message has always been that we help everyone in the performing arts and entertainment community,” said Joseph Beninkasa, president and CEO of the foundation. the hollywood reporter Before Monday’s announcement. “Who these people were is a little different than what they are today, but the term ‘actor’, when the organization was founded, was used by everyone who worked in show business. So this discussion has always existed. ”

Benincasa says that the current brand change, which includes its first logo (the heart in the form of a focus), actually started 15 years with a temporary and smaller brand change effort that created the first slogan of the foundation, “Entretenimiento for everyone.” But how the organization believes it still doesn’t specify how broadly the nonprofit defines an entertainment industry worker and how many people it supports in its housing, health care and emergency financial assistance programs.

Then, about five years ago, the foundation officially surveyed “the entire performing arts and entertainment community,” Beninkasa said, including union and guild members as well as studio and theater staff. “What came out loud and clear was that our name should say who we are, who we help, have a slogan and feature our first logo,” he said.

The organization made that effort and was preparing to announce its current rebrand when the pandemic hit. The foundation was forced to cancel the live event where they were supposed to make an announcement before quickly demanding support for members of the entertainment industry amid multiple production shutdowns, including an estimated 100,000 people on Broadway who were unemployed and missing. Health care has been around for almost two years.

“During the pandemic, we realized that people didn’t know they could come to us for help. “So we had a lot of hype and a lot of publicity around it to let people know that there was a fund of actors to help them out,” Beninkasa said. THR. “The pandemic that we were shown is that this decision was justified.”

In addition to Monday’s announcement, the Community Entertainment Fund will use its advertising campaign, “most of which is donated,” Beninkasa said, to spread the word and encourage more people in the industry, from staff to press. the support group. He plans to do so with the help of syndicates, guilds, theaters and studios and members of his stellar council.

They include actress Annette Benning, talk show host Greg Berlant, former Writers Guild West head Chris Kaiser and Good fight Producer Brooke Kennedy. (Kaiser and Kennedy were also responsible for producing the organization’s three-minute video announcement about the name change, which included the names of Stokes and other major foundations.)

Looking ahead, the foundation’s president says the organization wants to “triple the number of people we help” over the next three years and hopes this rebranding will help the nonprofit achieve that goal.

“We don’t beat the chest. “We don’t talk much about ourselves,” Beninka said of the board, volunteers and staff. “But we are talking about what we do and how we help. We want people to know they can reach us.”

“During the pandemic, we helped 68,000 people and provided $27 million in direct financial assistance,” he said. “We want to make sure everyone knows that our organization can help them at some point in their lives or throughout their lives.”