Innovative program trades children's artwork for corporate donations

To refresh his corporate offices, Bill George, president of Health Partners Inc., acquired 42 unique works.

He was drawn to vibrant colors, minimalist pieces by emerging artists, and powerful primitives unlike any he had seen on business walls.

He liked the simplicity, the brightness, the accessibility of his choices. And he loved that they made his workers smile.

"It is hard to be in a bad mood when you look up and see these," he said, sounding like a parent who has papered the refrigerator with a child's awkward, but alluring, art.

Which isn't far from what he did.

Health Partners, an HMO owned by local hospitals and health clinics, was the initial corporate donor to Fresh Artists, an inspired new nonprofit that seeks to solve a problem (finding art supplies for schoolchildren) by filling a need (art for corporate offices) in a way that pays for itself (trading children's works for donations).

In the process, the program boosts the self -esteem of students who often come from the city's most disadvantaged neighborhoods and whose lives seldom, if ever, intersect with corporate Philadelphia. Through Fresh Artists, those students see their work - and their names - hung in the city's halls of power.

Just a year old, Fresh Artists has already delivered $40,000 in art supplies to 150 art teachers throughout the Philadelphia School District, which has seen funds for such supplies fall 50 percent during the last 13 years. The money was raised, in part, from five corporate donors, including Comcast and the law firm Saul Ewing L.L.P.

Fresh Artists is the master work of Barbara Chandler Allen, a relentlessly enthusiastic booster of children and the arts.

The nonprofit was a natural end product of the work Allen had done as a consultant with the school district.

Charged with finding suitable art to fill the district's new headquarters at Broad and Spring Garden Streets, she used student work, photographed in high resolution and dramatically enlarged.

The art was so well received that it occurred to Allen it might have a wider audience, a corporate market that could generate income to keep the art coming.

Allen saw a nonprofit model that could end the need to go hat-in-hand each year to benefactors. Joan Ulmer, director of marketing for the Nonprofit Center at La Salle University, called it "cutting edge."

"Most charities are top-down: 'the haves' giving to 'the have nots,' " Allen said. "This is totally different. We have created a lateral philanthropy. It is vulnerable children giving to other vulnerable children. The adults are there simply to grease the wheels."

Fresh Artists works this way: Student art is selected and, with student permission, photographed and added to a digital gallery. Reproductions are offered to donors as "thank-you gifts" in return for contributions, ranging from $500 to $2,500.

The money raised is returned to art teachers in the form of grants for art supplies.

"This has been a real morale-booster for teachers like me," said Darren Umble, an art teacher at Potter-Thomas Elementary School in North Philadelphia. "Not all of my students succeed in other areas, but the place they might shine is art."

Allen selects the art to be offered.

"We have created an art collection that is intended to appeal to corporations," she said. "We are not looking for the best art. We are looking for art that we think corporations and businesses will want on hang on their walls."

She steers away from the more polished work and instead is drawn to the raw expressions of those with less formal training.

"I would say the strongest art comes out of the middle schools," Allen said. "There is a tremendous amount of energy there."

For the moment, Fresh Artists remains a small start-up, operated out Allen's Lafayette Hill home. It has no personnel costs, save a bookkeeper. Allen said she intends to keep expenses down, even as she seeks new galleries anywhere she can.

"We have big plans," she said. "I want our children to see their brilliant work all over this city."