MPTF Begins Fiscal Year with Approval of More Than 1,700 Grants

December 1, 2021

Dan Beck  -  Trustee, Music Performance Trust Fund

The Music Performance Trust Fund (MPTF) 2021-22 fiscal year began with a bang on May 1! After more than a year of COVID-19 isolation, professional musicians were ready to gather again and eager to perform. As the world yearned for an end to the pandemic, the commercial live entertainment industry began gearing up, even without full confidence that the crisis was over.

Based on the expectation that finding co-sponsors for admission-free events would be enormously challenging for union locals, the MPTF announced that it would fully fund all engagements for the first three months of the fiscal year. The MPTF further announced a special 100% grant opportunity for Labor Day weekend events, even though community performances returned to a 50/50 matching grant policy on August 1.

The results of these efforts have been enormous. MPTF approved over 1,700 grants and provided in excess of $1.77 million in the first six-months of the fiscal year, including more than $140,000 over Labor Day weekend alone. 

Those performances comprised:

• over 350 live stream concerts.
• grants awarded to 103 locals who pursued them.
• 484 performances, including 118 live streams, implemented by Canadian locals.

Moving forward, the MPTF will continue to fund live stream grant projects with a cost of $5,000 or less at 100% throughout the winter months, while live audiences may still be restricted in various regions of the U.S. and Canada. This is currently available to all locals within their annual allocation. Funding for locals that have met or exceeded their allocation is determined on a case-by-case basis. The MPTF implemented these various grant policy adjustments to ensure equitable distribution of grant funds, within the overall annual allocation budget of $2.2 million for the current fiscal year.

The MPTF and the entertainment community at large eagerly look forward to COVID-19 finally subsiding. We remain excited to continue our work with locals to explore and help them again benefit from the resources of community co-sponsors with the launch of our new fiscal year beginning May 1, 2022. We have designed and produced MPTF brochures to introduce the benefits of community co-sponsorships; these are available to locals upon request. Additionally, the MPTF is working on plans for new event support materials to promote events on location and online.

The MPTF has also provided a supplemental resource for AFM family members in the form of Music Family Scholarships. The program was initiated during the pandemic. It provided an additional $100,000 in both the current and last fiscal years. Awardees were announced in last month’s International Musician.   

The MPTF’s documentary film, MusicianFest: Never Too Old also received its second film festival laurel via its acceptance by the LifeFest Film Festival, which is dedicated to showcasing films that reinforce the intrinsic worth of innocent human life and the profound significance of each life. We congratulate the many musicians who made the film so special. The film can be viewed on the MPTF website: www.musicpf.org.

With a staff of five and the support of two independent representatives, the MPTF continues to pursue the mission of enriching lives through music and bringing admission-free live music to communities throughout North America. 

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