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Arts groups in Kentucky and Indiana will receive more than $300,000 in grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer has more.

The NEA announced it is distributing the money to 17 arts groups and writers throughout Kentucky and Indiana in the first of two rounds of grants for 2010.

And the list includes Sarabande Books. The not-for-profit literary press that was founded in Louisville in 1994 will receive $35,000.

Sarah Gorham — Sarabande’s president and editor-in-chief — says the money is needed with the recession having impacted the press’s budget.

“The money will definitely go towards doing more books and increasing our education programs,” she says, “including sending our authors out on tour — basically readings and workshops and lectures.”

Another Kentucky group that will receive a grant is The Paducah Symphony Orchestra. It’s slated to get $10,000 that it plans to use for concerts that feature visual artists from the city’s LowerTown Arts District. So says orchestra executive director Darlene Dreyer.

“We have art exhibits and they’re themed alongside the theme of the music for the evening,” Dreyer says. “So, I think that the NEA has picked up on a unique partnership that could very, very strongly be a long and ongoing project.”

Dreyer says the funding helps after the recession forced the group to cut costs and institute a hiring freeze.

Among the Indiana recipients is the New Harmony Project, which runs an annual writers’ conference for new play development.

Administrative director Joan David says the grant will help during this recession as the project has seen declines in donations from foundations and individuals.

“I think the market was down almost 40 percent last year, but our decrease was 20 percent from individuals,” David says. “But 20 percent is significant when you have such a small budget — just $300,000.”

Below is a complete list of the grants awarded in Kentucky and Indiana. The grants are part of $26 million the NEA is distributing to more than 1,200 groups and individuals nationwide.

NEA Grants to Groups and Individuals in Kentucky
Actors Theatre Of Louisville, Inc., $35,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Appalshop, Inc. (Whitesburg), $15,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Horse Cave Development Corporation, $10,000 (promoting local cultural organizations, traditions)
(Grant Type: Challenge America)

Juneteenth Festival, Inc. (Louisville), $10,000
(Grant Type: Challenge America)

The Louisville Ballet, $20,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Paducah Symphony Orchestra, Inc., $10,000
(Grant Type: Challenge America)

Sarabande Books, Inc. (Louisville), $35,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Stephen Foster Drama Association, Inc. (Bardstown),  $10,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

University of Kentucky,  $15,000 (production of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess”)
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

NEA Grants to Groups and Individuals in Indiana
Frances Hwang (South Bend),$25,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Indiana Repertory Theatre, Inc., $30,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Indiana Symphony Society, Inc., $22,500
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Indiana University $30,000 (contemporary folk traditions traveling exhibition)
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Margaret McMullan (Evansville), $25,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

New Harmony Project, Inc., $15,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

South Bend Symphony Orchestra Association Inc., $10,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

Very Special Arts of Indiana, Inc., $15,000
(Grant Type: Access to Artistic Excellence)

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Thursday afternoon, students at Indiana University Southeast will protest the possibility of fines for violating the school’s smoking ban.

All IU campuses have been tobacco-free since 2007. An IUS committee is considering attaching fines to the academic penalties for violating the ban, but spokesperson Erica Walsh says that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.

“That is one of the things that is on the table, but there has not been anything presented, there has been nothing decided,” she says.

A group of students will march on campus Thursday to protest the possibility of fines and the ban in general. Under current rules, students can only smoke in private vehicles on campus. Protestor Ian Girdley says he would like to see the university set aside a few outdoor smoking areas.

“Some people don’t drive, some people take the bus, sometime you’re parked on the other side of campus and there’s no reason there can’t be designated spots, even shelters, where you can partake in a cigarette without negatively affecting people,” he says.

Girdley says he’s expecting anywhere from 15 to 150 students to attend the protest. A smoking ban at the University of Louisville will take effect next month.

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A new study from Indiana University’s Center for Philanthropy aims to help nonprofits perform better at fundraising by indentifying why people donate. WFPL’s Elizabeth Kramer has more.

IU researchers collected data from more than 10,000 households and found that reasons for giving correlated with education levels and income, no matter the region.

The study challenges earlier research that states people in different regions throughout the country give for different reasons relating to shared regional values.

The center’s Melissa Brown says people with incomes more than $100,000 say they give to improve their communities, while different reasons were behind responses from households earning the median income of $50,000.

“People with that median income level and lower, responded that ‘meeting basic needs’ and ‘helping the poor help themselves’ — those were the kinds of things that mattered to them in their giving,” she says. “Those were their top motivations.”

Brown is the center’s associate director of research.

The study comes during a deep recession and aims to help nonprofits perform better at fundraising.

“We’re very interested in helping nonprofits generate the revenue that they need to do the work that they want to undertake,” Brown says. “And we started this study thinking and expected to find strong regional differences in part because of that history of other people’s work that talked about culture heritage and we found that it’s not there.

Brown says the center is now working on another study that seeks to pinpoint the feelings that cause people to make charitable donations.

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