The Australian String Quartet (ASQ) has launched its Future Fund, a $15 million endowment designed to underpin the organisation’s ongoing sustainability.
The ASQ Board is building the ASQ Future Fund as long-term investment capital to safeguard artistic excellence and ensure live string quartet music continues to inspire and connect people for generations.
For more than four decades, a combination of government funding, private donations and box office revenue has supported the ASQ’s year-to-year work and will continue to do so.
The ASQ Future Fund is a forward-looking commitment to embrace the future with confidence. It has already received strong backing with a $4 million commitment from the Wright Burt Foundation secured toward the $15 million target.
The Wright Burt Foundation is a private ancillary fund supporting the arts, environment, education and heritage. After more than a decade supporting ASQ, the Foundation has chosen to publicly support the ASQ Future Fund as its Lead Donor.
Following the Foundation’s early lead, an additional $725,000 in founding commitments to the ASQ Future Fund has been secured through gifts and pledges from Kerrell and David Morris, the Richard Cavill Foundation, the Ian Wallace Giving Fund, Diane Craddock, some current and former members of the ASQ Board, and other donors.
The ASQ Future Fund is an endowment, invested for the long term. Once $5 million has been received and invested, the ASQ can draw on the annual investment income, capped at 5% of the Fund’s average value. The capital is never spent.
Gifts and pledges now total $4.725 million towards the $15 million target. As pledges are paid in over the coming years, every gift received now brings forward the day the Fund begins supporting the ASQ’s work.
The ASQ Future Fund is an act of cultural leadership through a proactive investment designed to underpin the ASQ’s operations, ensuring the organisation can remain resilient into the future. The Fund presents an invitation to major philanthropic partners and individual supporters to help build an enduring legacy for string quartet music in Australia.
For ASQ’s four full-time Co-Artistic Directors: Dale Barltrop, Francesca Hiew, Chris Cartlidge and Michael Dahlenburg, the ASQ Future Fund will sustain artistic excellence, champion Australian creativity, connect communities through music and futureproof string quartet music.
The launch of the ASQ Future Fund coincides with ASQ’s Voyager tour, which has already played in Perth and Sydney. The tour continues on to Mount Barker (South Australia), Adelaide, Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne.
The announcement lands amid a federal parliamentary inquiry into how Australia can better support long-term giving to arts and culture. The timing also falls close to AusArt Day (22 October), a national day dedicated to growing giving to artists and arts organisations.
The ASQ Future Fund is a long-term financial anchor, designed to sustain and evolve the string quartet artform in Australia.