Date: October 15, 2001

[Editor's Note: Since many members have asked about this issue, I felt you would be interested in reading this explanation.]

It's important for all Barbershoppers to understand the background information and facts that led to the special Task Force recommendations which were adopted by the SPEBSQSA Board of Directors in November, 2000.

In 1964, when the Society adopted The Institute of Logopedics as its Unified Service Project, the world around us was much different than it is today.

Children with severe mental and physical challenges had few places to turn except the institutions spread around the country, such as the Institute of Logopedics. Even though it is a common barbershop myth, our support of this institution has always been for their residential student program. While speech and hearing disorders are common with the residential students, their challenges reach far beyond simple speech and hearing problems.

In 1964 few public schools were staffed and equipped to deal with these multi-challenged students. During the 1960 and 70s, however, landmark legislation was passed by the United States Congress. In summary, this legislation made it a federal law that every school district in the country is required to provide a full education for every student within its boundaries, regardless of physical or mental disabilities.

It was during the 1970s and 80s that many schools began experiencing funding challenges. In many of these schools, music programs suffered cuts eliminating, or severely cutting back the quantity and quality of music education.

The barbershop contributions to Heartspring have always gone toward partial scholarships for the residential students. Because of the nature of the care and education, tuition for a residential student ranges from $125,000-200,000, annually. By Heartspring's own rules, no student may receive more than 30% of his tuition via these scholarships (which are supported by the Society and seven other patron organizations.) The rest of the money comes from various sources, which may include money from the child's home school district, the home state, other agencies, and the parents.

Their residential school has always had room and staff to accommodate up to about 40 children at one time. They also provide outpatient clinics and therapy to local residents, but the Society has never contributed to this part of their operation, only scholarship money for their residential school.

Since 1964 Barbershoppers have contributed more than $16 million dollars to The Institute of Logopedics/Heartspring. We suspect that millions more may have been contributed through wills, trusts, etc. Heartspring has done well by SPEBSQSA. And we have done well by them.

It was gratifying to see in the December, 2000 issue of Heartspring's newsletter The Dialogue that they are financially on very sound footing. In their financial report on page 7 of the newsletter they show that operational income over expenses for the year 2000 was $1,866,720 and for 1999 the operational income over expenses was $2,325, 721. Additionally, the new campus they built several years ago has already been paid for, in full. We can all congratulate them for their sound financial management. Considering all this, the Task Force (which included Past Society President Tim Hanrahan, Past Society President Dick Shaw, Past Far Western District President Bob House, Past Society Board Member John Krizek and Past Seneca Land District President and former Logopedics Committee Chairman Jim Eldridge) were unanimous in their recommendations to the Society Board of Directors that, "It shall be the charitable mission of SPEBSQSA to preserve our musical legacy through support of vocal music education in our schools and communities." Other recommendations, also passed by the Board, support the need and wisdom of focusing our charitable mission around the core purpose of our organization.

Recommendation #4, said, "To focus the Society's charitable support on its Vision Statement and Charitable Mission statement, and in consideration of governmental and societal changes during the past thirty years, charitable support of Heartspring is to be focused on research and education linking vocal music to the treatment or improvement of multiple mental and physical disabilities in children." What a wonderful way to continue our relationship with Heartspring in a manner that will keep our organization's mission in tact and also provide Heartspring an opportunity to conduct some break-through research that will help their students, students in other facilities and schools and possibly bring Heartspring national recognition. We hope they elect to conduct such research.

We have begun, over the past three years, to use our Harmony Foundation General Fund and SingCanada SingAmerica donations to preserve vocal music in our schools and communities. In that time we have supported 42 grants totalling nearly $250,000 to community and school music programs all over the U.S. and Canada. We estimate that nearly 10,000 people, mostly young, have directly benefited from the grants, and over 50,000 parents and audience members have indirectly been touched. These donations have also funded over 15 Harmony Explosion Camps which have given over a thousand young men and their teachers a weekend of choral music and barbershop harmony education and fellowship.

Have we given up on Heartspring? Hardly. While Heartspring is no longer an SPEBSQSA service project, we hope they decide to conduct research that we can fund. But in the meantime realize that over the past 36 years we've given Heartspring 16 million dollars, maybe double that. Now we've done what any responsible organization should do. We've re-examined who we are and what needs exist in our world. We have realized that societal needs have changed over the past 35 years and we've decided to focus on needs and issues core to our organization.

We would certainly hope that gifts made by Barbershoppers support the Society's charity-Harmony Foundation and our Charitable Mission. Hopefully during the next 35 years, we can make a real difference in bringing the joy of singing back to our culture. If we do our job well enough, we should, again, re-evaluate how our Charitable Mission can best be focused for our organization to help others.

Rob Mance has provided the program for the full month, and promises to have the program for the following month before the end of this month.

Please make sure that you have reviewed all the music that we will be singing this week and the presentation plan for each song, so that we are always in performance mode. We are singing well. Let's make sure that the audience sees us at our best in all areas!

Feet, knees, shoulders, tongue, jaw, eyes. Remember what to do with each, and do it before each song we sing.

Practice is something we do at home, every day, between rehearsals!

Rehearsal is where we reinforce what we have been practising every day!