The following is a conversation between Joe Benincasa, CEO of the Actors Fund, and Denver Frederick, the Host of The Business of Giving.


Denver: Since the start of the pandemic, The Actors Fund has distributed well over $20 million in financial assistance to thousands of people working in theater, film, television, music, and other entertainment fields. The organization envisions a world in which individuals contributing to our country’s cultural vibrancy are supported, valued, and economically secure. 

To learn more about their work and the impact that COVID has had on those in the industry, it’s a pleasure to have with us, Joe Benincasa, the chief executive officer of The Actors Fund

Welcome to the Business of Giving, Joe! 

Joseph: I am delighted to be with you, Denver. You’re an old friend, and it’s great to be on your show. Thank you.

Denver: Thank you! It’s great to see you again. Tell listeners more about the mission of The Actors Fund and a little bit about its history as well.

Joseph: The Actors Fund was founded in 1882, 139 years ago, when everyone in the performing arts and entertainment were called actors. We were formed as kind of a sinking fund to help widows and people who were injured in the course of their life, and we provided direct financial assistance. Later on, it evolved to providing boarding houses, retirement homes.

Now, the organization fortunately has expanded its services to really engage itself in every aspect of an artist’s life. And we’re very proud of the organization. So, it’s a hundred and almost 40 years old, which is kind of amazing. It has a great legacy. And it’s always had great leadership. 

Denver: Until The Actors Fund came along in 1882, there was really significant prejudice against the profession, unbelievably so. Tell us a little bit about that and why it existed. 

Joseph: Actors were those people who were on the wrong side of the tracks at all times. The women were not respected. They were considered to be less than decent. Men were considered to be reprobates. But that did change. 

It did not help that John Wilkes Booth, an actor, assassinated Abraham Lincoln. But people like Edwin Forrest and Buffalo Bill Cody and a number of other actors of the 19th century who became stars and celebrities and established themselves as great patriots reshaped the public view of people working in the theatrical community, and that formed The Actors Fund. It was formed and enacted by the state legislature in New York, and it’s a national organization. 

But there was recognition in the 1880s and 1890s that actors were decent and important people in this world. And when I say actors, I mean everyone involved in the business of presenting theatrical shows. It helped that people like Mark Twain got on board with the organization, famously launched a major fundraiser in 1902 for The Actors Fund. Presidents like Grover Cleveland got involved with The Actors Fund. So, there was a recognition that these were important people in the lives of the society. 

Denver: It’s really a seminal organization. That’s one of the footnotes I appreciated in learning about in preparing for this interview… that religious organizations wouldn’t give them charity. They couldn’t get a decent burial. So, the significance of what happened in 1882 is even beyond the organization in terms of the way we perceive the profession. 

And you were talking about Mark Twain and other presidents. But one of the things that I remember really well was Night of 100 Stars. That was probably in the early ‘80s for your centennial. Tell us a little about that, and where did all that money go? It went out to Englewood, I think.

Joseph: Until that point, The Actors Fund had inherited some property from Hetty Green, who was the Wicked Witch of Wall Street in Englewood, New Jersey. And it was like a boarding house, like a retirement home. Really not suitable for seniors who are aging and having difficulty with steps, et cetera. 

Alexander H. Cohen decided that he would put together–he was on the board of The Actors Fund–a major three-hour broadcast called Night of 100 Stars. And as Alex told me, it really was the night of a thousand agents because once he announced Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor and Colleen Dewhurst as the people who were already signed up, the calls from the agents started.

It was a different time. Network television– there were three major networks, and he was able to sell a big licensing fee. And the purpose of the 1982 event, Night of 100 Stars, the first one, was to celebrate the centennial. And number two was to build a nursing home or a proper retirement home for actors. And that got the organization going to do that.

Denver: I remember his wife was Hildy Parks, and she did that with him. 

Joseph: Hildy Parks was wonderful. I worked a lot with Hildy. She was the editorial behind the show. And we worked very closely together. Hildy lived at our home in Englewood, which was a wonderful kind of thing to happen – someone who helped raise money for the organization ended up needing care from the organization. So really nice. Hildy was great.

Denver: So looking a little bit more into the work that you do… You are the human service organization for everybody in the acting and entertainment field. You touched on it a little bit in the opening but get into a little bit more depth of the kind of services that you provide.

Joseph: Well, let me take a look at it through the perspective of the pandemic, just for a moment. Direct financial assistance – incredibly important because of the ups and downs of a life in the arts. Take a writer on a TV show who may write a pilot, and all of a sudden, the pilot doesn’t get picked up by a network and … out of work. So, the person is looking for the next gig. It’s really a gig-driven profession. So, direct financial assistance is very important. 

Number two, health insurance is incredibly important because – a) people… to earn health insurance, if you’re a member of a union or guild, you have to work a certain number of weeks. And so, if you don’t work, if you’re a SAG-AFTRA member working in film, and you don’t have 21 weeks of work, you don’t have health insurance. So, that’s why about 25% of all SAG-AFTRA members — about 120,000 members of that guild — only about 20% of them work enough to enjoy health insurance by the guild.

Then there’s affordable housing. People working in the entertainment field have to be near major urban areas like New York or Los Angeles or Chicago. And they need affordable housing because those areas tend to be expensive to live in, especially if you work in Los Angeles, which is why we have a housing development corporation to build more affordable housing for artists. 

And then there’s everything else connected to a life in the arts. And that is: a) You need some mental health support. You need career counseling because what happens when you haven’t worked for two- or three years in your chosen profession? We help people develop the parallel or the second career through our career center. And then there’s healthcare. I mentioned health insurance counseling, which we’ve been very active in for a long time now through those navigators under the Affordable Care Act in providing health insurance counseling.

We provide free healthcare to people through partnerships we have in New York with Mount Sinai, for instance. We have a beautiful healthcare center right in Times Square. And when the pandemic hit, and the vaccinations became available, and the performing arts and entertainment community wanted to get vaccinated, we created with the City of New York a vaccination center right in Times Square. And we got people vaccinated very quickly, which worked out very well. And it’s helping Broadway, in particular, to come back.

When someone comes to you for help, usually they may think they need financial assistance, and in fact, they may need financial assistance, but they may need help in financial planning. They may need help in healthcare. They may need multiple services. So, we bring people together, and we find the resources for them to use. 

Denver: Are there any other organizations, Joe, that are comparable to what The Actors Fund does for the members of the entertainment and acting community?

Joseph: There are a number of really worthy organizations that help out. I think of an organization like MusiCares, the Grammy Foundation– I’m on their audit committee and was treasurer for MusiCares Foundation. 

Then there’s the Motion Picture & Television Fund Home in Woodland Hills, which has a beautiful campus and provides many similar services to ours, but we complement one another. In fact, our health insurance counseling activities are joined at the hip through a separate partnership. Those are the two major ones that we work closely with, but there are others. And they’re all credible. Maybe not as large as either Motion Picture & Television Fund or The Actors Fund, but we have joint committees. 

We gather everyone to a round table once a month, now a Zoom table once a month, to share resources, to talk about how an individual who has come to us for help. Because when someone comes to you for help, usually they may think they need financial assistance, and in fact, they may need financial assistance, but they may need help in financial planning. They may need help in healthcare. They may need multiple services. So, we bring people together, and we find the resources for them to use. 

Denver: Let me ask you about your home in New Jersey. You do have senior centers, and we know nursing homes, and those for the elderly were among the first to get hit by COVID. Share with us a little bit about your experience there, and what you did to mitigate it, and how it looks now. 

Joseph: Well, Denver, you know the CEO is as strong as the management team is. And we were fortunate to have hired, some time ago, a terrific administrator to run our nursing home and assisted living care facility in Englewood, New Jersey. And we have not had a case of COVID since April of last year. And Jordan Strohl–

Denver: That’s remarkable and congratulations. 

Joseph: We’ve had two COVID units that we set up at the request of Governor Murphy, bringing people in with COVID to provide care. We had ample supplies of PPE, which is terrific and really a credit to the management at the home. We’ve done very well.

And it helped that two years ago, we finished a $34 million expansion of the home, which created, in addition to nursing care and assisted living, a memory care unit, and a subacute care rehabilitation center. And that was terrific. And we’re just finishing up further pandemic proofing: new doors enhanced ventilation system exchanging the air. So, we know there’s going to be more challenges to a vulnerable population. I mean, the flu could be back big time, and that’s a killer. So, we’re really proud. And that goes through for all of our affordable housing residences in Brooklyn, New York City, in Los Angeles. 

We’ve done–knock on wood–very well. And it’s really the teams. It’s the management team; it’s the frontline workers in all those areas who have been so dedicated and have done so well. And we have supported them. We did offer hazard pay. If you’re willing to put your life on the line, we wanted to make sure that people were properly compensated and cared for. We encouraged people to meditate. Everyone has their own Headspace account. It’s what they choose. So, we have supported our staff very aggressively. And so we’re very proud of the organization. 

The home is beautiful. It’s, I might say, consistently a five-star rated residence, which is as high as you can get from the federal government. Our ratings by the State of New Jersey and locally in Englewood have been perfect. I don’t know who gets perfect ratings, but they have been perfect. So, we are very proud of the operation there.

And to credit management, Jordan and his team out in Englewood, we closed our doors to outside visitors two weeks before the governor asked other nursing homes to do so. We were extremely cautious. We were anticipating that something bad was on the horizon. And we were right. 

Denver: You’re right. It’s the upside of being a bit more pessimistic than the optimists out there who think everything’s going to be okay. And sometimes that kind of cautionary mindset really does pay dividends.

Joseph: Yes. And so, we’re fortunate in all of our areas in every place. In fact, we did a $10.4 million renovation of our residence in Palm Avenue in West Hollywood. And we had to move 40 people out, move them back in. It was very complicated. But we didn’t have a COVID case, so we were very proud.

And the business of The Actors Fund in terms of our commitment to helping people, continues. We launched a $120 million construction project in downtown Hollywood to build 154 units of affordable housing for artists, together with a small theater and a variety of services, including new offices in Hollywood for the community there. And fortunately, we’re well along in that project. 

Denver: I saw that. The Hollywood Arts Collective. I think you broke virtual ground back in February. So, there’s no grass growing underneath your feet. It’s just moving ahead and moving on. 

Joseph: And like everything else, that didn’t happen overnight. Building an infrastructure for a credible organization start was a daily process. But we started that project 10 years ago with feasibility funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MusiCares Foundation and we tested everything. And then we garnered a lot of support, including at the groundbreaking–you may have seen it–we had the Mayor Eric Garcetti there, plus all the local elected officials. And we’re very proud of that project and proud of the leadership there. 

Denver: Taking everything we’ve talked about so far, Joe, you guys saw a 71% increase in the number of people you served in 2020 compared to 2019. Talk to me about the finances. Talk about the budget and how you’ve been able to do all of this, and how you’re trying to get your arms around what you’re going to do next. 

Joseph: Well, in terms of fundraising, we set records in fundraising. And we have to credit– and we made that transition to the digital platforms very quickly. 

Rosie O’Donnell helped us out. She wanted to recreate her show, which was very successful. It was like a four-hour marathon. But she had everyone and their brother and sister on that show, and we raised a lot of money that first night. Then Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley started Stars In The House. The name was created by our chairman, Brian Stokes Mitchell – Stars In The House. And that’s a daily livestream online. Then people like Bob Greenblatt stepped up, and we did a really big fundraising event. Companies like Netflix stepped up to help us out. We did a lot of premieres. 

I don’t think we’ve had an evening when there isn’t some sort of fundraising going on. And created by the community, the greatest kind of fundraising. Almost 60,000 new donors have come to the fund through the pandemic. We hope to maintain the support of all of them, but we’re being realistic about it. And we’re not sure everyone will continue their support for the actors from the way they have during the height of the pandemic. 

But we’re also, like any smart organization, we’re testing some other fundraising campaigns. What else do we want to do to help people? How much more money do we need? We finished a new strategic plan with a terrific committee from our board and key stakeholders outside the board in the community to take a look at the organization to determine what the next three to five years should look like, and that was the key.

Being on these digital platforms, many of our program services have become national because more people are participating.

Denver: Any takeaways from that you can share?

Joseph: Well, I think the easiest thing to say is more of the same and an expansion in a national area… where we’re looking at Atlanta in particular where we have a real interest in creating Actors Fund Services in that community with a lot of film and television production; Nashville, where the music industry wants us to have a greater presence; Las Vegas, where there’s a great arts community there… in addition to Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. 

Embracing the role of The Actors Fund as a national organization, I have to say being on these digital platforms, many of our program services have become national because more people are participating. If you’re talking about helping people manage their finances, and you’re an artist, being able to do that with guest counselors on a national platform is great. You don’t have to go to the office at 729 Seventh Avenue or 5757 Wilshire Boulevard for that session.You can increase your numbers from like 40 people at a workshop to 150 and increase the number of workshops dramatically.

So, I think that we’re embracing technology in a big way. We have plans to expand our technology. And also supporting our staff in the use of technology, how the staff works in the future. We know our frontline workers in our residences, they’ve never had a day off, or we force them to take time off. But how to equip our social workers and our counselors and our other people to work in a hybrid situation where they’re not necessarily in the office every day.

So, as we return to work after Labor Day in our New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles offices, it’s going to look a little different. I don’t know about you, Denver, but everyone in our field that I talk to, we’ve never worked so hard as through the pandemic. Even if I’m in and out of the office and in and out of our residences, but much of my time is spent at home in my home office, and those days are very productive. 

Denver: They’re very intense, and they’re very long. And the other thing about it, too, is that summer used to be sort of a respite for us. I mean, where you and I go way, way back, and I remember July and August would be like a little bit of a breather. There’s no respite anymore. A week in July is the same as the week in October. Don’t you find that?

Joseph: I do find that. But one of the things that we’re– I’m not good at it, and I doubt that you are either– but we’re forcing people to take time off, because fortunately, everyone is so mission-driven, wanting to get the job done. We’re kind of counseling people, “You haven’t taken a vacation. So-and-so can fill in for you.”

And the other thing, we did a lot of cross-training during the pandemic. So, we were able to get people good backup system setup so that when someone needed some time off, we moved someone else into that spot.

My health insurance counselors – we added 12 to that field. And we were able to hire and train many out-of-work people from the creative community, and they’ve been terrific at it. So, they’ve developed a second career or a parallel career should they not be able to get back into the film, television or theater fields right away.

We like to pat ourselves on the back, saying that we have embraced diversity, especially onstage diversity. I’m very proud of The Actors Fund governance because we’ve increased the number of women in governance. We’ve increased members of the Asian community and the Black community on our board. And we have consistently done that, but we have to do more. And we are doing more to better understand the systemic racism that is part of our society. 

Denver: You made a lot of lemonade out of lemons because it truly is. There’s a lot of silver linings to come out of this. And I was speaking to somebody the other day who said we’ve probably had 5 to 10 years’ innovation in one year. 

And it also sometimes speaks to, Joe, the power of constraints. Often, when people think of innovation, I think that they think of “Give me blue sky, and you can do anything you want,” but it’s the constraints that this pandemic has put on us that has made us do things that we probably never would have done otherwise. And they are only going to be around to amplify the work we do when we get back to so-called normal. 

Joseph: I agree. So, we look at the pandemic. The loss of life is terrible. Loss of work is terrible. The pressures that have been put on all of us in terms of mental health is significant. But turning the lemons into lemonade is something that we keep on embracing. 

And then we have to talk about diversity and inclusion, too. And we’ve been hard at work with helping our staff and our board be more diverse ethically, geographically, in every way. And we’ve been fortunate to have been through the pandemic, have recruited some really terrific help in that area, from Netflix– having their head of HR and DEI training help us out work with the board. About five years ago, we did a major study. 

So, we’ve been hard at this, and it’s been deeply appreciated by our staff that we have grappled and faced head-on racism, systemic racism. And it helps that our board chair and members of our board represent the Black community. The chairman of the board, Brian Stokes Mitchell, who is a pure inspiration– co-founder of Black Theatre United.

So, we are fortunate to– I think number one, in the entertainment community, we like to pat ourselves on the back, saying that we have embraced diversity, especially onstage diversity. I’m very proud of The Actors Fund governance because we’ve increased the number of women in governance. We’ve increased members of the Asian community and the Black community on our board. And we have consistently done that, but we have to do more. And we are doing more to better understand the systemic racism that is part of our society. 

Every successful CEO–and there are so many out there–surround themselves with competent people who are more competent than they are.

Denver: It’s a journey, and it’s just not something you do and then be done with it. It is an ongoing effort. And one of the things you mentioned, which I really think is smart, is leveraging the board members to tap into their expertise at their corporations, and probably not enough nonprofits are doing it. They’re trying to do it on their own. When people have probably done a little bit more of it and have a greater resource at a higher level, and if they can come in the way you’ve been using it and leverage that intelligence and expertise, it just helps it in moving along.  

Joseph: Every CEO, every successful CEO–and there are so many out there–surround themselves with competent people who are more competent than they are. And for the board, that means seeking a board that can help us in healthcare. 

We have the head of the Greater New York Hospital Association on our board, and his help in connecting us with all the health services for our members has been significant; the Head of HR for Netflix, who’s an expert on DEI, helping us better understand our role there; plus all the key stakeholders. We’re fortunate that our board… we have representatives of every stakeholder community, whether it’s a union, guild, or theater owner on the board. And I got to tell you, not a day goes by that we don’t ask them for help. 

Denver: I talk to a lot of CEOs, Joe, and they have told me that they’ve had to make more big decisions in the last year than in the previous 10 or 15 years put together. What would you say was the most difficult decision that you’ve had to make during this crisis? And how do you go about making a really tough decision? 

Joseph: That’s an excellent question. I think the biggest decision that I’ve had to make–and it’s never made alone, though I know there’s a certain idea that the CEO has a lonely position, but I just reach out to my senior management–but the idea of compensation. 

I’d say, number one, the effort that goes into successful fundraising and cooperating with the creative community to help us raise the money and support them significantly so they can do what they would like to do for The Actors Fund. Supporting them, supporting the staff so they can support the volunteers who are getting the job done, compensating people fairly. 

And we, early on in the pandemic, I held my ground. I mean, what we did was I asked senior management to take pay cuts. And we did that. The top four people in the organization took some significant pay cuts, and we just weren’t sure what was going to happen. But we didn’t extend those pay cuts to the rest of the staff. We knew they were going to be frontline. We compensated them. We paid hazard pay for the frontline workers. 

We compensated people. We supported our staff. We invested, even when I wasn’t sure that we would have enough money to invest in the technology to help people work from home, but we did those investments

So, I think the hardest decision we had to make was cutting pay as an example of our dedication to the mission of the organization was the easy decision because it set an example of that modelling behavior. Number two, telling the board that we don’t know what’s going to happen in six months, but we cannot cut muscle from the organization. We have to support our staff. So, supporting our staff, which meant proper compensation, proper support, I think was the hardest decision. 

That was my gut feeling. But I did test it with the head of fundraising and the head of our program services, the nursing home staff, our affordable housing people, and they all kind of said, “Well, let’s see what we can do.”

And it worked out well, but that was the hardest decision… was to commit to compensating staff, not laying off staff. And you ended up hiring more staff to the mission. But modeling behavior was, in a secondary way, important. 

Denver: And a big thing is just making those decisions. I think a lot of times people can get paralyzed and want more information and more data. It gets to a point where you just have to say: “We have to decide now because the decision is going to be made for us. If we don’t decide; the events will just overrun us.” So, you have to really put a stake in the ground and say: “This is what we’re going to be doing. Hey, I may be right. I may be wrong, but we will have spoken.”

Joseph: I think the CEO has to stand, or he or she, or they have to stand behind the management team, and you have to really report to the board honestly, candidly, realistically. Having a strong treasurer, a strong finance team. Your finance team is always going to be a little more pessimistic than the CEO is going to be, which is wonderful, which is great.

Denver: That’s their job, you know what I mean? You get them and the legal team together, and you can’t do anything. 

Joseph: You’re right. But fortunately, we have again… very proud of the management team we’ve put together and my direct reports… there’s a certain candor with them. But ultimately, it is the CEO who makes that decision, who reports to the board, whose job is on the line, whose credibility is on the line. And we made the right decision. 

Denver: It turned out right. And it’s good. I think that not enough organizations make decisions; this was a little bit of an unusual case. But then look back on those decisions and then say, okay, we decided to do this 5 or 10 years ago. What happened after that? And was it the right decision? And I find so few organizations that analyze their decisions because there are going to be patterns that you’re going to be able to identify if you took the time to do it. 

Joseph: Absolutely. I think every CEO, every organization has important decisions to make. I like to think that The Actors Fund has been forward-thinking in its decision-making. For instance, 5 years ago, we decided to build a rehabilitation center as part of our senior’s complex. 

And we did that because A) Medicare financing is strong and we needed the Medicare financing for the rest of the operation because there we realized 70% of our residents rely on Medicaid for support. In our opinion, you can’t run a quality facility for seniors solely on Medicaid reimbursements. You need philanthropy, and you need a little extra, and that’s what the rehab center…. 

Back at the Great Recession which was interesting, we decided to launch a special campaign. And to make about $12 million because we anticipated that the recession would have a negative impact on the people we serve. And there was an 11-month campaign. We organized the leadership properly, and we raised it in 11 months. And that was not a popular decision, but it was the right decision.

And that was the only time in my career–well, two times–where I didn’t have the complete support of the board because again, you always want to make a strong case to the board for support. You always want unanimity whenever you can get it, but you can’t always get unanimity. And for the decision to expand the nursing home and for this special campaign during the Great Recession, I had a few negative votes there, but it all worked out well.

Denver: It all worked out well. Well, let me pick up on what you’re talking about, and let me close with this, Joe. And that is leadership.

You have been the CEO of The Actors Fund for 33 years, going on 33 years. How do you maintain your energy and enthusiasm for the job after so many years? And also, how do you get people to continue to listen to you after you’ve been talking to them that long… there have got to be some secrets to it? What do you think they might be?  

Joseph: Well, especially with our advancement, our fundraising team. I have to remind myself at every meeting not to talk about what we did in 1995. Not to talk about Night of 100 Stars, but to keep on looking at the present and the future. 

I think the organization is constantly evolving. And the community we serve is constantly evolving. So, for me, when I joined the organization, it was a troubled organization financially. It had launched a nursing home construction project that had failed. We had to reinvent it and finish the job. That was the first job, changing the governance of the organization, getting it refocused on human services and a variety of human services. 

Then we got into the affordable housing business, which was a new activity in a new corporation, with new leadership in a sub corporation of The Actors Fund. Then it was the challenge of people not having health insurance in the entertainment industry, creating in 1998, a free healthcare center. 

So, the challenges have changed and fortunately, I’ve been nimble enough personally to recognize that things are changing around me and that I need new voices to come in. So, it’s always helpful to do strategic planning and to engage people who are not necessarily trustees of the organization, combine those two – stakeholders and trustees – to look objectively, and to have it facilitated by an outsider. 

So that has always been helpful. It’s helped not only me, but it’s helped the management team evolve its thinking. And it’s helped us stay nimble. So, my enthusiasm for the organization is really all about enthusiasm for the people we serve. I have such great admiration for people in the creative community because they are out there out on a limb all the time. They’re working in a gig economy. They are private business people. So, I look at them as: They don’t have a paycheck every two weeks. They’ve got a gig, and they’re constantly proving themselves. And so, I have enormous admiration for the community we serve, and we just want to do more to serve them.

We’ve outlined the goals of service pretty well. I think that’s going to constantly change. We visit our strategic plan every quarter with the management team. We constantly survey the people we serve, and we constantly listen. And I spent a lot of time listening to our key stakeholders about what they think their members or their constituents need. 

And that’s a lot more work. There is an enormous amount of work. And with the right volunteer leadership, that’s something that I’ve learned through my career is: you want to have a credible organization; you want to be rated well by Charity Navigator and other rating organizations. 

We have a top rating, and we consistently have that top rating. I’m proud that trustees of the organization talk about the organization, walking the walk, so we try. Although I’ve been beating my chest a little bit with you, Denver, I have to say that we don’t beat our chest. 

Denver: No, you keep a low profile in the organization, you really do. 

Joseph: That works. If anything, we talk about the great volunteers that we have, and we have really great fiduciaries and great volunteers willing to go to bat for The Actors Fund.

Denver: So if I had to take one takeaway from what you just said, it would be this: If you’re in a job for over 30 years, create a brand new job for yourself every five of those years, and start a new business, whether it be healthcare or affordable housing or whatever. It just keeps it new all the time. 

Tell us about The Actors Fund website, some of the information that you have up on it and how listeners can help support this work if they should be so inclined to do so.

Joseph: Well, actorsfund.org. It’s terrific. It’s focused on services, so you’re not going to see a lot of bells and whistles when you go to actorsfund.org. What you will see is information about an organization that provides programs and services to its constituents. 

But you can go to the donate page, and you can make a donation. That’s the easiest way to make a donation to the Actor’s Fund. It’s just actorsfund.org/donate. And I encourage you to take a look at leadership. Take a look at the About segment; learn about the organization a little bit. Look at our 990, the most important organizational document that an organization can provide to its interested donors. 

And so, we’re very proud of our 990. The new one won’t be completed until later in August or September. But good document. And we’re very proud of the fact that we have a great audit and governance committee. The information is all there on the website. 

We also have contingent websites related to the nursing home. And also for our Looking Ahead program, which serves our young people. But start at actorsfund.org. Learn about the organization before you consider a donation if you’re not a donor to The Actors Fund yet. 

Denver: That would be very smart. Well, thanks, Joe, for being here today. it was a real pleasure to have you on the program and great to see you again.

Joseph: Great to see you again, Denver. Thank you for this top opportunity to talk about The Actors Fund.


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