On a bright and unseasonably warm November day, the D’Addario Foundation on Thursday partnered with Hungry for Music, Todd Rundgren’s Spirit of Harmony, Instruments in the Cloud and Lyft to host an instrument collection event at D’Addario & Co. headquarters in Farmingdale, N.Y. Representatives from Korg were among those who made donations at the event.
The D’Addario Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose primary mission is to support robust community-based not-for-profit programs bringing quality music education to underserved areas.
“The foundation reviews hundreds of applications every year. What we’ve noticed is a significant increase in the need for instruments,” Suzanne D’Addario, executive director of the D’Addario Foundation, told the Music & Sound Retailer. “We have never been able to fulfill that need. So, we decided to reach out and identify other not-for-profits whose main focus is in acquiring instruments and distributing them to programs. We met Jeff Campbell, the founder of Hungry For Music, Todd Rundgren’s Spirit of Harmony foundation and a fairly new organization called Instruments in the Cloud, whose main mission and purpose is the acquisition of instruments for underserved programs. We thought [the event] would be a wonderful way to serve some of the needs of our programs by partnering with those organizations and running an instrument drive event. This is the first [event] we hope of many. We hope to replicate this model and have it cities across the country.”
The need for charities is of even more importance in the aftermath of several natural disasters in 2017. “Disaster relief is obviously a big issue right now,” said D’Addario. “We’re working with the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation to identify programs in the Houston area and hopefully fulfill needs there.”