Tag: Louisville Public Media

Philanthropy

WFPL’s Louisville Public Media announces $7 million capital campaign
Louisvillel Public Media building
Louisville Public Media’s headquarters.

Money raised by the Raise Your Voice campaign will go toward renovating the non-profit’s headquarters and studios at 619 S. Fourth St. in Louisville; technology upgrades, and programming improvements. The building was last remodeled 20 years ago. The campaign has already raised $5.3 million. Here’s the press release.

The campaign committee’s co-chairs are District 8 councilman-elect Brandon Coan and his wife, Summer Auerbach, who manages the Rainbow Blossom natural foods company started by her parents, Rob and Pumpkin Auerbach. The other co-chairs are philanthropist and former Brown-Forman executive Bill Juckett and his wife Barbara Juckett. Other committee members are Tyler Allen, Charlie Barnsley, Todd Lowe, Ron Murphy, Ben Ruiz, Lee Smith and Peter Wayne. Naming rights range from $250 for a coffee station to $500,000 for an entire studio.

Founded in 1950, Louisville Public Media also is the parent of Classical 90.5 WUOL and alternative music station 91.9 WFPK Radio Louisville.

Investing

In Ky. college endowments, ‘bigger is definitely not better’

The University of Louisville and other public colleges have built the biggest endowments, but are nonetheless lagging other, often smaller institutions in annual investment returns, according to a new report today by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. For its report, the center examined five years’ worth of investment returns of 11 endowments statewide.

Related: review the University of Louisville Foundation’s annual IRS tax returns on non-profit tracker GuideStar.

Philanthropy

Philanthropist Al Shands creates new arts grant

The Great Meadows Foundation grants will support visual artists in amounts from $500 to $5,000. They’re named for the home Al Shands and and his late wife Mary Norton Shands built in Crestwood; it includes a museum for their extensive collection of contemporary sculpture and art, according to WFPL.

Al ShandsThe couple developed their interest in collecting after Mary was asked to lead the Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation, now the KMAC museum, in the late 1980s, WFPL says. Shands, 87, is a longstanding Speed Art Museum trustee, and a member of the Peggy Guggenheim Museum advisory board in Venice.

An heiress to a broadcasting fortune, Mary died in 2009. The Shands’ collection is to be bequeathed to the Speed museum upon his death. It includes work by notable artists such as Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Jim Dine and Maya Lin. In a video last year, Shands spoke to The Courier-Journal about the collection.

Photo, left: Shands beside a LeWitt sculpture at Great Meadows; Hyperallergic.

Related: a book examines their art-filled estate.

Latest Headlines

Hut delivers real pie-in-the sky; Churchill: no ‘Panama Papers’ tie, and Taco kindness rules
Mount Kilimanjaro
Pizza Hut conquers Africa’s highest mountain peak: 19,347 feet.

A news summary, with a special focus on big Louisville employers; updated 11:34 a.m.

PIZZA HUT set a new Guinness World Record for highest-altitude pizza delivery when it successfully carried a pie to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro on Sunday, a stunt marking the company’s expansion today into its 100th country: Tanazania. Over four days, the Yum division used an airplane, a motor vehicle, professional hikers and a backpack to deliver the pepperoni with extra cheese to the summit of Africa’s highest mountain (CNN).

CHURCHILL DOWNS says there’s no connection between the company and an entity with a similar-sounding name among more than 320,000 offshore accounts and trusts unveiled in a “Panama Papers” database Monday (WFPL). What happens when you bet $24 at the Derby without checking the odds again (The Billfold).

TACO BELL: Police in Santa Ana, Calif., bought a 31-year-old employee with cerebral palsy a new $500 adult-size tricycle to get to work after thieves stole his previous one last week; watch the video (KABC). In Ohio, video of a Taco Bell employee’s act of kindness — using sign language to help a customer — is rolling across the Web (WEWS).

KFC remains optimistic about India, despite slower sales (Business Standard). Chick-fil-A’s average sales per restaurant in 2014 were $3.1 million. Rival KFC sold $960,000 per restaurant that year (Business Insider); full rankings (QSR Magazine).

FORD thinks the driverless cars of tomorrow could come with their own drones (Detroit News).

In other news, Staples and Office Depot have called off their merger over anti-trust concerns; Staples has five stores in Louisville, and Office Depot has two (MarketWatch). An atheists group wants to spend $10,000 on billboards protesting a northern Kentucky Noah’s Ark theme park set to open in July, but can’t find anyone to take its business (Courier-Journal).

464932097JL073_66th_Annual_
Fieri

Vietnamese street food restaurant Pho Ba Luu is headed for Market Street in NuLu (Broken Sidewalk). Food Network star Guy Fieri is planning a new restaurant chain, Guy Fieri’s Smokehouse, with the first to open  Sept. 9 at Fourth Street Live (Courier-Journal). Kroger needs to fill 14,000 open jobs nationwide (WDRB).

Media and Marketing

A big win at the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting

The non-profit journalism outfit and WFPL affiliate just landed top industry honors from a national journalism organization: Investigative Reporters and Editors. IRE named KyCIR’s “Jailers Without Jails” series the winner of its an annual award for radio investigative journalism.