“Music is not an extracurricular activity or something that people only do after school. It's really something that needs to be part and parcel of every school day.” - Henry Donahue, Director, VH1 Save the Music Foundation
Henry Donahue is the director of the VH1 Save The Music Foundation, whose mission is to revive music education as a standard part of a school’s daily curriculum. It was nice to catch up with him since our last interview in 2016 to hear about new projects on the horizon including bringing younger grades into the music education mix. Henry and the foundation are in charge of setting up grants and programs in school districts across the country, ranging from donated instruments in New York City high schools to a mariachi music program in southern California.
VH1 Save The Music Foundation is focused on bringing arts education, especially music, back to K-12 education and overcoming the funding issues that cause arts education programs to be slashed due to tighter educational budgets. As Henry points out, most of the arts programs being cut show a “systemic inequality” common bond. The numbers range from 15,000 to 25,000 schools, mostly in economically challenged urban and rural areas serving immigrant and minority kids that do not have music arts curriculum and haven't had it for a generation or more.
Despite the name, VH1 Save The Music Foundation’s role is not to fly in from New York and save the music. Their mission is as a convener and a catalyst to bring together all the players inside a community into a healthy music ecosystem: the school district, the city government, the teachers, the performing artists, local arts organizations and local philanthropic funders. It’s an overseeing role and a capital investment in school districts to organize and bring people together in a way that helps sustain future growth.
Interview Transcript:
Rod Berger: Henry, it's so nice to catch back up with you. We spoke probably over a year now at the VH1 Save the Music Foundation about all the wonderful work that you're doing and the impact that you're having at the local school district level. We were saying off-air that here are still so many schools and young people who are in need of the arts so it can help support their development and learning.
I know that a big part of your own mission is to really have eyes and ears open to what's going on so that you can continue to empathize the wonderful experience and the background of VH1 Save the Music Foundation. Tell me what's been going on over the last year. What lessons do you continue to learn?
Henry Donahue: Thanks, it's good to be back. This is our busy time. We just finished the back-to-school period; we’ve made grants to start new music programs in eighty schools nationwide, and then we delivered instruments, book stands, and other equipment that folks need to get over the hurdle and get those programs started in school in this August-September-October timeframe. That's exciting.
I think we probably talked last time about the programs that we're investing in. They range from general music ─ Orff instruments for Pre-K through 3, like the program that we're piloting out in Fresno, California, all the way through the band and strings and even the Mariachi Program that we funded in Southern California this fall.
RB: What do you say, Henry, about the expansion of the different programs? Does that tell you the people are open to being creative, that you're finding other partners that want to be able to participate, that there's just more of an appetite, that it's not just you're trying to wedge yourself into a conversation but you're actually being welcomed into it?
HD: Yes. We almost always work at the school district level. We want to bring together all the players into a healthy music ecosystem in the community: the school district, the city government, the teachers, the performing artists, local arts organizations, local philanthropic funders.
Despite the name, our role is not to fly in from New York and save the music. Our role is usually as a convener and a catalyst because we can make that capital investment in the school district to bring all those people together in a way that helps sustain the program as it goes forward.
One of the other big things we announced is that we have a new project in the city of Newark. We were lucky enough to announce it at a big event with Queen Latifah and Wyclef Jean who are both Newarkers last week. We brought together city government, the school district, local arts organizations, and local funders. We've knocked out a five-year, five-million-dollar plan to bring music programs back to thirty-eight schools in Newark.
RB: That's incredible.
HD: We don't posit ourselves as the be-all-end-all but, hopefully, our reach and our influence and ability to invest helps bring all these different players together.
RB: Are you finding that you have more opportunity now for projects where you can basically play a central role in casting the characters that can then really impact and amplify an idea into something tangible like a five-million-dollar project that is impacting that many schools?
HD: I think so. I think we're seeing a little bit... and I'd be curious to hear from your other conversations... an upswing or a positive trend in the idea that music and the arts are really core to that well-rounded education idea.
It's not an extracurricular activity or something that people do after school. It's really something that needs to be part and parcel of every school day.
I think we're seeing a positive trend. I often say to people that this is one of the last remaining non-partisan issues in the U.S. We're seeing it across the political spectrum. We talked about this last time; we have seventy plus grants in the state of West Virginia, for example. We're now on our third gubernatorial administration there that we've been partnering with to sustain and build that project.
So yes, I think we're seeing a positive trend. We're seeing willingness in people to bring the arts, and music particularly, back into the core curriculum in schools.
RB: If you're going through those many different phases of governors and leadership at the state level and you're continuing to do the good work, that says a lot about the program that you and the foundation have set in place.
To your question, yes, I've seen an uptick in the application of music education and the arts into the general curriculum. I think there is still a lot that needs to be changed. We need to get to a place where we can talk about it not being just a “nice to have” activity but an essential part of a child’s development and a core component of curriculum and it's not something that’s an add-on luxury.
I'm seeing a change and a shift in that we're seeing more cross-functional teams of educators talking about ways to integrate the arts. That's a real positive. I would imagine it’s reflective of the kind of feedback you're getting on both your projects and the scale of your projects at this point.
HD: I think so. We always make the argument, first and foremost, of art and music for its own sake. The idea that art and music and beauty is really every person’s right to have as part of their day and part of their community. But we also see a lot of support and traction around music having a special power to fix what's ailing a lot of these public school districts. It helps attendance. It helps student engagement.
I was just in Danbury, Connecticut on Monday which is a new district that we're working with and the principal pointed out a kid who had just taken up the flute a few weeks ago ─ and not necessarily, traditionally, the most academically oriented kid. The principal said he’s got a tough home situation. But just in the month since we've started the program, he started to come to school more. He was more engaged. He was really focused on learning to play the flute.
We see that anecdotally, and also the people’s willingness to embrace the special power of music as you say to help all those other things that schools are working towards.
RB: Yes. It's hard to put a dollar amount on that impact.
If we get very casual in the conversation and this might sound like an off the ranch question, as they might say, but as you’re closing down at night do you ever stop and think to yourself, “We will have done our job if we are out of business.”
HD: I love that idea. I think that that should really be the ultimate goal of any pro-social organization. Rather than focus on just sustaining yourself. If you have a goal where you think it's achievable, and I think we do. In our lifetimes, to have every kid in America have access to music education as part of their school day. If we achieved that, then absolutely, I would gladly close.
I came from a background where I worked in an agency called “Purpose” that worked on an array of different social justice issues. You think of the example of marriage equality. There's a famous story of a guy who worked on marriage equality in New York State and nationally for a decade or more. And once that was achieved, I think they celebrated and closed down.
That would be an amazing outcome.
RB: Yes, It would be. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's sort of a delicate balance. I think that, especially as Americans, we get very comfortable when we think about society and norms. We get comfortable in thinking about those routine elements in our own day-to-day life, some that would come via non-profit assistance.
We come to accept that everyone has a role in a play. Everybody wears their role well whether we like it or not. We accept there's a comfortability even if we don't like it; we say and accept that we're just used to the arts being under funded. That's just the world we've all grown up in.
My goodness! What would it look like if that wasn’t the case? What if we had a more balanced approach to the athletic fields as we do to the music room or the orchestra and these sorts of things?
I just wonder about the thoughts of people like you who are working day and night to change that equation while people’s level of comfort and apathy allows these things to perpetuate over time.
HD: I think that the arts and music are interesting, in particular, because a large majority of American schools have them. Depending on the estimates you look at, two-thirds to three-quarters of all American schools have music and arts programs that they just take for granted.
We're really working on what I call a “systemic inequality.” 15,000 to 25,000 schools, mostly in economically challenged urban and rural areas and schools that serve immigrant kids, kids of color, Latino kids where they don't have music and the arts and they haven't had it probably for a generation.
That's what we're focused on ─ addressing that systemic inequity nationally and I think it's something that we can definitely solve in our lifetimes.
RB: It's really a fight, to some degree. I think you bring a freshness to it, and a rawness as well, that's needed. I think that there are tough conversations that need to be had and people that need to be brought to the table. We're all looking at people like you who are in charge of this to do it. It sounds as if you are a wonderful steward of that.
Continued success, Henry!
HD: Thank you.
About Henry Donahue
Henry Donahue is Vice President & Executive Director of VH1 Save the Music Foundation. Before coming to VH1 Save The Music Foundation, Henry was COO and Head of Partnerships at Purpose, a digital strategic and creative agency that focuses on social impact projects.
Before joining Purpose, Henry worked as a media executive focused on digital product development, M&A and financial operations, most notably as the CEO and Publisher of Discover Magazine. He has also held senior executive positions at Condé Nast, PRIMEDIA and LendingTree.com.
Henry spent most of the 1990s on the road across the USA as a political fundraiser for candidates including U.S. Senators Jay Rockefeller and Ron Wyden. At the same time, he was played guitar in a D.C.-based indie rock band and ran a small independent record label.
Henry graduated from Harvard College with a degree in American History. He has an MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. He is a native of Washington, DC and is an avid supporter of both the city's professional basketball franchise and its punk rock bands.
Follow Henry Donahue on Twitter
Further Reading:
People.com - Imagine Dragons Teams with Foundation and Festival to Donate $40K in Music Education Grants
Hamlethub.com - VH1 Save The Music, SpreadMusicNow donate $180,000 in music education support to Danbury schools
Additional Reading:
Educators helping students and battling for the arts
Teachers using music education technology in the classroom
Celebrities giving back to arts in schools
About Rod Berger, PsyD.
Dr. Rod Berger is President and CEO of MindRocket Media Group. Berger is a global education media personality and strategic influencer featured in The Huffington Post, Scholastic, AmericanEdTV, edCircuit, EdTechReview India and Forbes.
Audiences have enjoyed education interviews with the likes of Sir Ken Robinson, Arne Duncan, Randi Weingarten, Sal Khan along with leading edtech investors, award-winning educators, and state and federal education leaders. Berger’s latest project boasts a collaboration with AmericanEdTV and CBS’s Jack Ford.
Follow Dr. Rod Berger on Twitter.