Actors' Fund
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Actors' Fund of America is a nonprofit umbrella charitable organization that assists entertainment and performing arts professionals through a broad spectrum of programs, including comprehensive social services, health services, supportive and affordable housing, employment and training services, and skilled nursing and assisted living care, with a current annual budget of $21,000,000.
The Fund was founded by Albert Marshman Palmer on June 8, 1882, largely due to the efforts of former New York University student Harrison Grey Fiske, editor of the New York Dramatic Mirror, who was aware of the many problems faced by those in the profession. Funds raised at the 1892 Fair, held at Madison Square Garden, enabled the charity to begin providing individuals and families with assistance, including burial plots in a Brooklyn cemetery and accommodations in the Actors’ Fund home. Throughout the next several decades, benefit performances held throughout the country raised significant amounts of revenue to subsidize the Fund's many projects. When the AIDS crisis hit the industry in the 1980s, it was there to help thousands of individuals who were affected.
The Fund sponsors many special events and performances, with numerous Broadway stars and Hollywood celebrities hosting, performing, and/or attending. Theatres throughout the country frequently pledge all the proceeds from a regularly scheduled performance to the charity.
Offices are maintained in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and the Fund is associated with, and helps coordinate the work of, a wide range of sister organizations which are able to raise money through donation, including Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, the guild/union relief funds of Actors' Equity, AFTRA; AGMA; AGVA; Episcopal Actors' Guild; The Jazz Foundation; the Professional Dancers Society; MusiCares, and Society of Singers.
The Fund has merged with the Actors' Work Program, which offers individual career counseling, workshops, tuition grants and scholarships for entertainment union members, and provides job listings.
The Fund also runs the six acre Lillian Booth Actors' Home, in Englewood, New Jersey, which is a nursing home and assisted care facility for retired members of the entertainment community regardless of resources. There a wing is dedicated to American actor Edwin Forrest, for his Forrest Home for retired actors in Philadelphia was incorporated into the facility. There is a similar residential and medical facility in Southern California, the Motion Picture and Television Fund in Woodland Hills, near Los Angeles.
Canada and England also "look after their own" in the entertainment world (see below for their websites).
