Maryland State Arts Council Continues to Support Waterfowl Festival
The Maryland State Arts Council has again come through as the largest financial supporter of Waterfowl Festival (WF), providing $60,242 in grant funding for 2020. While there is no Fall event taking place, this funding for the organization’s operations will be used to make some changes and create new online offerings for Festival guests as well as future educational programming.
Waterfowl Festival is grateful to MSAC for more than 15 consecutive years of support in the Folk and Traditional Arts category of their Grants For Organizations program. 
Their support has been especially critical this year because it enables WF to develop a new website, with additional news features, better social media integration and future secure e-commerce functionality. It has also allowed the Festival leadership to rethink ways to connect its festival-goers with artists, exhibitors, local businesses and vendors by utilizing some new online features which will be unveiled later this month. As a boost to its operating funds, the grant has allowed staff to continue working during the COVID-19 crisis by creating a critical revenue source that will be missing since the Festival was cancelled for 2020.
The staff, board and volunteers will continue to plan for the 50th Festival in November of 2021 to make it as great, and even better, than ever.
“We are incredibly grateful to the Maryland State Arts Council for their continued support and recognition of the importance of arts organizations, especially this year,” said Executive Director of Waterfowl Chesapeake, Margaret Enloe. “They understand that arts organizations are struggling in the wake of closings and cancellations and that it takes time and resources to rethink our ways of working. We are incredibly grateful that MSAC supports us and appreciative of their commitment to all kinds of ‘art’ that will be vital to our collective, community recovery.”