Or do any of you have a patron? It seems like there use to be a lot of them around. Do people actually do this anymore, or am I outa luck?

a what?

I wouldn't mind having a benevolent piano donor to send some decent pianos to all the facilities I play at.

Our chorale group has decided to offer businesses the chance to be a group sponser this year and so far we have picked up 5 sponsers (to help buy risers, and pay our director/accompianist).

Our local orchestra has patrons and sponsorships; but thats a whole big ball of wax really. They have a big budget and need big bucks to do all they do each season.

A friend of a friend is studying at RAM (the Royal Academy of Music in London), and has a patron who pays for school, living expenses, travel, you name it. It's all about being able to market yourself to old women, heh.

Like The Producers!

Tax laws make this more difficult to do.

I hate your friend of a friend!

Blame Marx. Blame the Bolsheviks. You can't have patrons without an educated, cultured, priviledged upper class with nothing better to do than spend money on deserving talent (YOU) among lest worthy indulgences. Sad, very very sad.

originally posted by Frycek:
Yes. Old-school philanthropy surely had its good points!

That's interesting. From what I understood, donations are tax deductible. How does it change if you're sponsoring someone?

I'm auditioning for a scholarship (tomorrow in fact) but I don't think that's quite the same thing as I have to work hard to get it and keep it

If you give an individual, not a non-profit organization, more than $11,000 per year (that may have increased), you are required to pay gift tax on it. This is related to the inheritance tax, so there is a way around it, and there will be a year when it goes down to zero, but there is paperwork and recordkeeping involved.

There are exceptions for education and medical expenses.

If you are paying someone for services, then you are either an employer, which makes the payment taxable, and you have to withhold taxes and social security, or the person you are paying is an independent contractor, and you need to send them a 1099 form, and they are responsible for taxes and social security.

All in all, it is easier to give money to schools and non-profits, and let them handle it. So the patrons of today may be the people who give money to schools. Someone just gave enough money to Yale to make their music school free. That's a modern-day patron.

There's something else you need to glean from this: Everyone working in the performing arts needs to know about the business and legal requirements of their profession. I tune for the theater department of my alma mater. I don't charge them any more, because I don't need to, but my biggest contribution to them is teaching them that they need to teach their students the business requirements that they will need to deal with.

Ugh!

2 bad i'm not rich

Never heard of such a thing. Perhaps they've been mostly replaced by the scholarship system. Don't most people who want to support well-deserving talent offer this support by way of scholarships, that's what full-ride scholarships are for.

I worked part-time all through college to help pay my way. My husband took out loans (his parents hardly gave him a dime) and after I met him and got married it took 10 years to pay back. (So make sure you are able to get a decent paying job in your career to pay back the loans if you do it this way.) Otherwise hopefully you are fortunate enough to land some scholarships or grant money.

BDB - The tax issue has another facet in that everyone has a $1 million lifetime exemption on gifts. They can use a portion of this each year by filing a gift tax return (no tax due though) for amounts exceeding $11,000 up to the $1 million. Paying the school directly for an individual is gift tax free.

Society in general has toughened the hearts of benefactors by people who want a free ride and want to revert to a socialistis society where everything is given to them. I have many clients that still are very generous, but now more discerning as to what and who they support. ONe in particular pays the full shot for five new students to go to medical school each year, but they have to show great promise and be benevolent after graduation.

I think there should be some differentiation between people who want, and people who can't otherwise.

You don't have a $1 million exemption on gifts. The only exemption is the $11,000 per person per year. You have a $1 million zero bracket for gift and inheritance tax. If you use it up on gifts, you don't get it on inheritance tax.

When I was a student, my teacher became something of a patron. He didn't pay my rent or other expenses, but I got lots of free concert tickets.

I bet your teacher just knew the people, usually the promoters, who issued comps for those concerts so they wouldn't seem empty. He wasn't the donor, he was just a conduit.

That is the case, but as they say, never look a gift horse in the mouth--or a gift Vulcan in the ears.

It's still done occasionally, but not as often. People with means are far more likely to create endowments that generate more money than simply give the money away.

Also...when you donate the money to an instutition, it's tax deductable. When you give the money away, it's simply a gift and can't be deducted any more than the gifts you give at christmas.

BDB, The is no such animal as a zero tax bracket in the IRS Gift Tax code, it is a $1 million lifetime exclusion for gifts and is separate from the $11,000 annual exclusion. If you use the $1 milion up during lifetime, that has noting to do with estate tax (transfer tax is the new term). A husband and wife can do gift sharing to an indivual and thereby give the individual musician $22,000 annually free of gift tax and free of not using a portion of the lifetime exclusion. The federal estate tax exemption currently allows for the transfer of $1.5 million of assets free of federal estate tax however individual States may imposed a lower limit.

Kreisler,
The one draw back to gifting to a school/charity for and indiviual musician and trying to get a charitable tax deduction, is that you cannot specify that it is for any particular individuals benefit, otherwise it falls back into the gift tax code.

Of course every persons situation may vary and should dicuss with their tax advisor how these particular aspects of being a benefcator to an individual affects them. There are still a lot of wealthy people interested in the art/music that have a sincere desire to assist gifted musicians as well as scholarships available.

Well, I have this robotic dad we nicknamed "Pa-Tron", does that count?

I know, lame!

If that's the case, the law has changed in the past couple of years.

You can, I think, specify that your money be used for a particular instrument, degree program, or minority. We have scholarships that are woodwind only, hispanic only, music education only, etc...