Florida Orchestra raises $1-million to match gift

By JOHN FLEMING

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 7, 2000

TAMPA -- The Florida Orchestra has more than managed to raise the $1-million it needed to match its single largest gift ever, officials said Tuesday.

In August, John and Susan Sykes of Tampa said they would match up to $1-million in new donations or increases in contributions made during the 1999-2000 fiscal year, which ended May 31. Sykes is chief executive of a Tampa-based computer support company, Sykes Enterprises Inc.

"The quantity of the challenge was so significant, it caught people's attention," executive director Leonard Stone said. "We made the challenge in bits and pieces."

Orchestra officials said Tuesday that the total match came to $1,020,000, raised from 1,874 new or increased donations to the organization's annual fund for operations. There were 635 new gifts.

Julie Swanson, director of development, said the largest single matching gift was $50,000 from the Eleanor Naylor Dana Charitable Trust of New York. The Morse Family Foundation of St. Petersburg made a $40,000 gift. Nineteen other individuals or organizations gave gifts of more than $10,000 apiece.

April and May were the big fundraising months. "I knew we were going to make the match when we hit $214,000 in the month of April," Swanson said. "We raised $198,000 in May."

The total of more than $2-million accumulated through the Sykes gift and the matching donations allowed the orchestra to balance its $7.5-million budget as well as cover a $250,000 deficit from the previous season.

Stone said he expected the orchestra to post a small surplus once all the financial results were in.

The Sykeses are becoming well-known in philanthropic and civic circles. He serves as chairman of the committee to bring the 2012 Olympics to the Tampa Bay area. The couple has given $28-million to the University of Tampa and $10-million to Queens College in Charlotte, N.C.

However, their gift of $3.4-million in Sykes Enterprises stock to the Southern Evangelical Seminary of Charlotte has been a source of dispute. Sykes said in a lawsuit that the seminary planned to misuse the gift.

The Sykes gift to the orchestra was unrestricted and chiefly intended to broaden the donor base. "It was given to us to challenge the community to support the orchestra," Swanson said. "Every orchestra needs this kind of significant support to survive."