Giving and getting back • Oregon ArtsWatch

Oregon residents can donate money to public causes any time of the year. But December, which is both a giving season and the time we’re starting to think about tax deadlines, is a very good time to do it.

And for arts and cultural donations, the state-operated Oregon Cultural Trust‘s innovative Cultural Tax Credit program offers a big benefit: If you give money at any time during the year to one or more eligible nonprofit groups and then give a matching amount to the Cultural Trust, come tax time your donation to the Trust will return to your pocket, not as a deduction on total income, but as a dollar-for-dollar credit on taxes owed.

If you give one group or a combination of groups $500, for instance, and then match that with a donation in the same amount to the Trust, what you owe on your state taxes is reduced by $500 — meaning that in essence you’ll have doubled your donation, spending $500 but giving $1,000 to arts and cultural groups.

Another reason it’s important to think about cultural donations in December is that to qualify for this year’s state tax reduction, you must make your donations by Dec. 31. And there are limits to the break you can receive: up to $500 for individuals, $1,000 for couples filing jointly, and $2,500 for class C-corporations. You can give more, of course, but those are the limits on how much your state taxes will be reduced.

More than 1,600 arts, heritage, and humanities nonprofit groups in every corner of Oregon are eligible for the Trust program: See the complete list here, broken down county by county. Eligible groups range from big players such as the Portland Art Museum and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to regional cultural centers such as Corvallis’s PRAx, Newberg’s Chehalem Cultural Center and Baker City’s Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, to smaller museums, library foundations, theater and dance companies of all sizes, literary centers such as Fishtrap in the state’s far northeast corner, classical and contemporary music groups, and more.

When a blockbuster movie or a musical superstar sweeps into town they’re backed by bagfuls of private money, and the idea, besides putting on a popular show, is to make money. Almost all of Oregon’s deeper culture operates on a much different financial system: It’s produced or presented by nonprofit organizations, reliant on grants and donations and ticket sales to do what they do. Making a profit isn’t the goal. Having enough money to produce their art and open it to the public is.

And this year is a particularly important one for most of these groups, which are still struggling to overcome losses during the Covid pandemic years and rebuild their audience bases. Donations this year will go a long way toward stabilizing the state’s cultural financial underpinnings.

Sponsor

The Oregon State Legislature established the Cultural Tax Credit in 2001 to help offset, at least in Oregon, a national gap in government support of arts and culture. In 2023, 10,271 donors gave $5.4 million, with an average donation of $513. Since its founding the program has accounted for about $45 million in awards to arts and cultural groups.

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As a nonprofit news organization, Oregon ArtsWatch is one of those 1,600-plus organizations eligible for the state’s Cultural Tax Credit donations. We bring our stories to you — roughly 700 a year — for free, thanks to a combination of personal, foundation, and government grants that pay for our operations. That largesse allows us to cover cultural news and issues in the greater Portland area and around the state.

ArtsWatch has no paywall: Everything we publish is available free to anyone online at our website, www,orartswatch.org. To do this, we rely on our readers’ support. If you can, please add us to your donations list this year — and get a break on your taxes while you’re at it. To get started, see our membership and donations page here. Thanks.