To advance its vision of creating a more musical world, The NAMM Foundation is providing grants to community music-making organizations that are serving as models for outreach and opportunities to make music. This year, a total of $482,500 is awarded to twenty-three programs, seventeen domestic and six international music organizations, each providing access to music-making for thousands of individuals across various communities and demographics. The annual NAMM Foundation grants reflect the generosity of all NAMM members and private donors and their ongoing support for the industry’s annual gathering at the NAMM show.
Since 1994, The NAMM Foundation and the NAMM Market Development department have reinvested $201 million dollars to fulfill the organization’s vision to support music education and advance active participation in music-making across the lifespan.
Anafima Associação Nacional dos Fabricantes de Instrumentos Musicais e Audio Ltd
(ANAFIMA)
Grant funding supports Make Music Day, Brazil, as part of the global Make Music Day held on June 21. In 2023, the group expects to host more than 1,500 music events in Brazil.
Australian Music Association
The grant will support AMA’s Make Music Day efforts to grow and 
expand into more states, engage with community music and education, continue to engage with the music industry, and increase public awareness of the annual event.
Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
The NAMM Foundation grant partially supports OrchKids Academy, a year-round during and after-school music program designed to create social change and nurture promising futures for Baltimore’s youth.
Coalition for Music Education in Canada
As a recipient, the Coalition for Music Education will have the funds to reimagine music education with their program, National Y4M Council. The program consists of twenty-four youth of diverse backgrounds from regions across Canada with an emphasis on building leadership for the next generation of musicians and music educators and advocates to influence music education policy in Canada.
Dallas Wind Symphony
As the organization returns to live educational events benefitting Dallas ISD students, the grant will support the Dallas Winds Band Camp for underserved students in grades 6-12 and “Strike Up the Band!” concerts for district fifth graders. In addition, support will help to revive the Invitational Wind Band Festival at the Myerson Symphony Center, expanding it to three days to record and distribute ATSSB All-State etude videos for the third year.
Guitars and Accessories Marketing Association
NAMM Foundation funding supports GAMA’s Teaching Guitar Workshops and serves school music educators to use guitar and/or ukulele in school music curriculum, thereby inspiring more music makers.
Guitars in the Classroom
GITC’s Social Emotional Learning (SEL) integration professional development efforts will benefit from the grant. The pilot program will focus on 12 six-week professional development courses and twenty teaching artist residencies.
Make Music Day/UK
The grant will support 2023 Make Music Day UK, a community-led celebration of music-making across the UK.
The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation
The organization’s School Instrument Donation program will benefit from the NAMM Foundation grant. Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation serves low-income and under-resourced school music programs, where students of color predominate in rural and urban communities across the country.
Music For All
NAMM Foundation funding continues to support the “Learn to Play Day” program. The “Learn to Play Day” program inspires new and lapsed music makers to start and/or return to music via a free 10–15-minute music lesson on an instrument of their choice.
Music Haven
Music Haven’s goal to provide academic and economic success for its students by providing one-to-one lessons, mentoring, family engagement, and equity and access in the arts will benefit from the grant. Music Haven serves low-income students from New Haven, Connecticut.
Music Will (formerly Little Kids Rock)
NAMM Foundation funding supports Music Will’s Modern Band Summit. The program aims to grow the impact of modern band across the country. The organization will do this by encouraging teachers to connect, network, and source from the community they know and love and to offer educators the same quality, peer led professional development for which it is known. The themes will focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, music technology, and entering a changed educational/student landscape.
National Piano Foundation
NAMM Foundation funding supports the Recreational Music Making (RMM) Scholarship. The RMM Scholarship program aims to enable qualified teachers to begin and/or expand group classes using RMM techniques and methods in a home, school, dealer, or other community settings.
National String Project Consortium
The grant will support the programs at four existing sites and an addition of a new site. The organization’s goal is to establish and nourish new and existing string project sites based on the NSPC model for this dissemination program, the USC String Project in Columbia, SC. In a city with no string playing history, the university created a program that nurtured young musicians, educated string teachers, and helped create public school programs.
Orchestre a’ L’Ecole
Located in Paris, France, NAMM Foundation funding supports their goals of creating orchestras that will grow, evolve, and flourish for three years. Their priority is to ensure that every new school orchestra meets the quality criteria defined in their quality charter, enabling orchestras to function optimally and sustainably.
Percussion Marketing Council
NAMM Foundation funding advances the Experience Drumming! Program. The program provides interactive educational drumming experiences in schools and community settings that create more drummers and percussionists and positively impacts percussion instrument manufacturers, drum shops, and music retailers.
Percussive Arts Society
NAMM Foundation funding will expand R!DC’s School and Family Access programs. R!DC’s signature program, “Find Your Rhythm!” currently serves more than 4,000 students, teachers, and families each year through school programs and expanded community programming, and this number continues to grow. The program’s primary goal is to inspire students to explore the benefits of music-making and self-expression.
San Diego Youth Symphony
The grant will continue to support the Chula Vista School District Sustainability project, allowing the group to continue its after-school music program and provide art-rich education to every student in the district while recovering from the impacts of the pandemic. Funding also supports the Community Opus Project, taking the program to additional elementary and middle school after-school programs.
SongwritingWith: Inc.
NAMM Foundation funding supports SongwritingWith: Soldiers retreats and outreach programs. The in-depth retreat program includes wellness and workshop settings based on positive psychology to craft songs about combat and the transition home. In addition, each retreat now offers a follow-up online writing session which deepens and furthers the work of building creativity, connections, and strengths, and our commitment for our program to not be catch and release. The program also supports post-retreat growth with group calls, online forums, volunteer opportunities, and in-person events. In addition, participants receive CDs and DVDs of song performances, photographs, and lyric books from the weekend.
The Sphinx Organization, Inc.
The NAMM Foundation grant will support the continued efforts to provide music education and exposure to Black and Latino students through the Sphinx Performance Academy. The Academy provides a full-scholarship summer chamber music and solo performance program for string players ages 11-17. SPA engages these young students and offers cost-free intensive training in a stimulating and inspiring environment.
Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME)
NAMM Foundation funding supports the expansion of participation in the academy. This project is conducted in four phases; promoting, selection phase, pre-academy (online), and the academy, held in conjunction with the 2023 TI:ME conference. Participants will focus on strategies for creating and leading technology-based music classes to reach students who are not in a band, choir, or orchestra. Attendees will also access the TI:ME and concurrent state music educators conference.
Save the Music Foundation (formerly VH1 Save the Music Foundation)
Save the Music (STM) Los Angeles and its #MusicSaves program will benefit from the grant in their goal to advance equity and access to instrumental music and music tech programs. The program plans to expand to fifty schools across LA Unified School District over four years.
Young Audiences Arts for Learning
NAMM Foundation funding continues to support, sustain and expand The NAMM Foundation Nonprofit Management Institute at The 2023 NAMM Show. The 2023 Institute will continue to monitor the changes in the field. The topics the Nonprofit Management Institute could address in 2023 include The Role of the Nonprofit in Advancing Culturally Responsive Pedagogy; Preparing Now for Inevitable Economic Cycles; and Supplement not Supplant – Nonprofits Steeped in Vitality and Partnership.
