The great campaigns: Fort Wayne's habit of the joint ask

From the 1974 Embassy save to the 2023–26 campus campaigns — the institutions are in their own legs

The tradition: Fort Wayne's nonprofit buildings were repeatedly paid for by the same device: a named campaign, a lead foundation gift, and a public thermometer. The Embassy Theatre's 1974 rescue turned on Robert Goldstine's $250,000 challenge (the theatre is in the Arts section); the arts then federated the ask itself — Arts United's Renaissance Campaign of 1989 consolidated the campus organizations' fundraising the way the United Way had federated charity in 1922. The pattern held into the 2020s: the "A Soaring Vision" campaign of 2023 carried the Arts Campus Fort Wayne renovations, and Purdue Fort Wayne's $22 million music industry center, opened in September 2026, was stacked exactly like the old campaigns — a $15 million state appropriation, a $3 million lead gift from the Auer Foundation, and $3 million from Chuck and Lisa Surack.

The joint-funder habit: The foundations also campaign together without a building at stake. The Foellinger Foundation and the Community Foundation jointly funded the 2018 economic-impact study that produced this section's sector count; Foellinger, the AWS Foundation and the Community Foundation co-funded Habitat for Humanity of Northeast Indiana's 2024 Rock the Block neighborhood repair day; and the Community Foundation's #GivingTuesdayFW Challenge converts the national giving day into a local endowment campaign, raising $242,696.75 for agency endowments in 2025. The machinery, in other words, runs in both directions: campaigns concentrate the community's giving, and the foundations cooperate to measure and steer the sector the campaigns built.

Sources:

1. Arts section of this history and sources there — the 1974 Embassy rescue and Goldstine's $250,000 challenge; Arts United's Renaissance Campaign (1989); Arts Campus Fort Wayne, "A Soaring Vision" campaign booklet (2023).
2. Purdue Fort Wayne news releases, 2023 and 2026 — the music industry center's funding stack ($15 million state, $3 million Auer Foundation lead gift, $3 million Surack gift) and September 2026 opening; Alliance for Human Services (2018) — the impact study's joint Foellinger–Community Foundation funding.
3. Greater Fort Wayne Habitat for Humanity (habitatneindiana.org), 2024 — Rock the Block funded in partnership with the Foellinger Foundation, AWS Foundation and the Community Foundation of Greater Fort Wayne; Waynedale News, 5 December 2025 — #GivingTuesdayFW 2025.