Special Bd. of Aldermen — 10/26/15 Page 10
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
| Know that you are still into negotiations, but do you have any idea what percentage the fiscal agent is going to
get or have you not gotten that far into negotiations?
Mr. Cummings What has been represented to me thus far is that there is no interest in City Arts Nashua
charging a percentage.
Alderman Harriott-Gathright
Excellent, if that is true, excellent.
Alderman Caron
Yes thank you, Alderman Jette asked a question concerning if the $4 million dollars wasn’t raised per
legislation what would happen. Do we have any idea or are we anticipating that we will get that money
considering some of this is Federal and State grants and you have a lot of competition.
President McCarthy
Anybody want to take that one on? Director Cummings?
Mr. Cummings Well from my perspective | don’t have an option we need to raise the $4 million dollars so that
is the only way | have been looking at this and we are going to figure out a way to get it done and if any of you
have been working with me over the last few months you know that this is pretty much all | have been focusing
on exclusively. | say that because we are trying to figure the best way possible to ensure that we create a
good, healthy arts and entertainment district here in the downtown. With that being said, | would ask maybe
Betsy to explain what the best practice is in terms of capital campaign giving and if for some reason that
scenario would occur, how you typically handle that type of situation.
Ms. McNamara _ Fortunately I’ve never personally run into that. A couple things, first | think particularly any
non-profit raising several million, smaller community based non-profit raising several million dollars is a risk
and it is a leap of faith on the part of the donors. So | think that this is being asked in a very much more direct
way than | have experienced before in capital campaigns but it is usually a concern that donors have. And it is
usually asked in the form of how is this going to keep going after you build the building, so sustainability. That
is one point.
The second point is that most of the time these gifts are made in pledges so that mitigates people’s risk if they
perceive that they have a risk. And the third thing is that in terms of, | mean | would not call it best practice to
have a campaign fail and have to give back money, as | said, I’ve never run into it. | think that yes there is a
dissolution of the fund and there are usually have been funds that have been spent in the course of creating
the non-profit, since a lot of this is for endowment that would not be the case so you would give it back.
The State Attorney General Charitable Trust Unit would have an opinion about that too. So if money was given
in good faith for a non-profit and then the non-profit dissolved, there are all kinds of regulations around that. |
am really not expecting to be there, but | appreciate the pressure behind that question.
Alderwoman Kelly
| wanted to know, | Know we are forming a non-profit connected to the PAC, will they take over being the fiscal
agent once that is formed?
