PORTLAND, Ore. — After 26 years of providing music classes and camps to underserved kids in Portland and around Oregon, nonprofit Ethos Music Center said it has no clear path to raise the money it needs to continue operating beyond the next couple of months.
Like many other local arts organizations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ethos now says it's facing an existential threat. In a letter to families on April 16, the board of directors wrote that for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2023, Ethos expects to report an operating loss in the range of $300,000 and reduced cash reserves year-over-year, and that it's expecting another operating loss and reduction in cash reserves for the fiscal year ending in June 2024.
The board wrote that it has no path to raise the cash it needs to continue operating beyond the next four to six months, short of liquidating its building on North Killingsworth Street in Portland, which the board said is the business' primary physical asset.
Ethos Music Center was founded in 1998 in Portland. The nonprofit offers music classes, multicultural performances, camps, ensembles and outreach to rural areas and immigrant youth. Students from Ethos have performed at the state capitol, kids have gone from students to performers to instructors, learning ukelele, guitars, drums, African drums, piano and other instruments. Many of the instruments have been donated to the organization, including a recent guitar donation from band Death Cab for Cutie. Ethos also holds programming for adults, like a Taylor Swift karaoke night this week to celebrate the singer's new album, "The Tortured Poets Department."
In 2018, Ethos was named one of KGW News' 8's Heroes for their work serving thousands of students each year.
"Our mission is to make sure that every kid has access to the life-changing power of music education, regardless of socioeconomic status or geographic location," former executive director Scott Moore told KGW in 2018.
Pricing at Ethos is on a sliding scale, with discounts for kids who qualify for free and reduced lunch.
Ethos said it was able to stay afloat from 2020 to 2022 thanks to two Paycheck Protection Program loans totaling $299,000, which were ultimately forgiven. But the pandemic disruption was catastrophic, rural outreach program director Megan Moran wrote in an email to KGW on behalf of the Ethos Board of Directors. She said the present financial situation is not sustainable.
Music teachers at Ethos have also recently unionized with Musicians Local 99. They held an election this week to approve the union. Ethos told families that part of its mission is to operate in a manner that includes fairly paying their employees, and that "while the current staff and teachers are strongly committed to Ethos’s mission of providing music programming and education to underserved communities in the greater Portland area and beyond, they cannot be expected to work for an organization that is traveling down the path to insolvency."
Ethos intends to continue offering lessons and recitals throughout the next few months, and summer camps are set to start June 24 and continue through August. Ethos told KGW that no decision has been made about the future, but that it plans to continue doing what it has always done.
Plans are underway to hold a meeting in the near future for families to ask any questions they may have.
