Charlotte Hudspeth Gadberry

Charlotte Gadberry, a master at the art of fundraising, has created the Acansa Arts Festival, a 5-day celebration of music, theater, visual and performing arts in Arkansas.

Charlotte Gadbury is the inspiration and some of the money behind the ACANSA arts festival coming up in a couple weekends.
Charlotte Gadbury is the inspiration and some of the money behind the ACANSA arts festival coming up in a couple weekends.

By now, you'd think corporate boardrooms and cocktail parties would empty when Charlotte Gadberry walks into the room. The fundraiser par excellence has been separating Arkansans from their money for one good cause or another for more than three decades. Not that she sees it that way, of course.

"I don't ask for help," Gadberry says, flashing the warm, purposeful smile so many donors have succumbed to. "I offer an opportunity and that's the key."

Over most of her career, Gadberry has raised money for established nonprofit institutions or helped them do it themselves. But this month, Arkansans will be treated to an undertaking Gadberry dreamed up herself: the Acansa Arts Festival. Modeled on the Spoleto arts festival held each year in Charleston, S.C., Acansa will present more than than 25 performances in the visual, performing, musical and theater arts to audiences in Little Rock and North Little Rock from Wednesday through Sept. 28.

Somebody else might have been reluctant to launch a new festival in what most describe as an uncertain economic and philanthropic climate. Not Gadberry.

"I knew that if it was something that Charlotte was leading, it was going to happen," says Bob Hupp, director of the Arkansas Repertory Theatre and one of the first people Gadberry called with her idea. "Charlotte doesn't take no for an answer."

When Gadberry was getting ready to go away to college at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, her father gave her a choice. "He said, 'You need to make all A's, or you can make all B's and get to know everybody on campus,'" Gadberry recalls. "I actually did a little of both. I did a little better than B's, and I didn't quite get to know everybody."

Gadberry, 74, was born and raised in Harrison, in the heart of the Ozarks. "I'm a hillbilly," she cheerfully proclaims, but the truth is that business acumen and community activism run in her blood. Her father, Verl Hudspeth, owned a car dealership and insurance company and built Holiday Inns in Harrison and Mountain Home. "He says, 'If you're honest you don't have to try to remember what you say or did,'" Gadberry says.

Her mother, Burnelle Treece Hudspeth, was a homemaker, president of the PTA and garden club and ran the Mountain Home hotel after her husband's death. Her mother was "very artistic" when it came to things like painting china and arranging flowers -- a talent that she claims passed her by.

At UA, Charlotte met upperclassman and Crossett native Jim Gadberry on a blind date. She left school to marry him after her third year of college. They lived in Dallas, St. Louis and Kansas City as Jim worked for what was then American Telephone & Telegraph Co. Charlotte gave birth to a child in each city. Today their three children -- Jay, Jill and Adam -- all live in the Little Rock area, along with eight grandchildren, all girls.

The couple returned to Arkansas when Jim took a job with Allied Telephone, a predecessor of Alltel. He retired as executive vice president after 39 years with the company.

In the late 1970s, with all her children in school, Charlotte went back to college to finish her degree, this time at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She earned her diploma in 1980, the same year her oldest child graduated from high school. By then, Charlotte's decision to go to work was more about making a difference than making a paycheck.

"She really challenged us growing up; both of our parents did," her daughter, Jill Johnson, says. "And in a good way. We learned to do our best, follow through, and try to leave the world a better place than we found it."

As a 40-year-old entering the workforce, Gadberry admits she was concerned. "You look and think everybody's so smart. I was surprised I could do a lot of those things people are doing."

On the advice of Bill Tedford, a Stephens, Inc. executive and friend since college, Gadberry applied for and got a job at the Arkansas Easter Seal Society. She spent eight years there, building up its development efforts, organizing events, soliciting major gifts and setting up an endowment fund.

In 1986, Gadberry took a job as executive director of the St. Vincent Development Foundation. Seven years later, she left the foundation with a $14 million endowment, having helped raise $2 million in her last year there alone.

"Fundraising with a nun is easy. Who is going to turn Sister Margaret Blandford down?" Gadberry jokes, referring to the late longtime president and chief executive officer of the foundation.

In reality, the process involves a lot of networking and a little psychology.

"It's getting to know people and offering up the opportunity to be involved in something that's bigger than they are," she says. "Everybody likes benefits. You have to decide what's the benefit for that person, and everybody is different."

Gadberry departed St. Vincent to help take care of her aging parents in what she thought was retirement. It proved short-lived.

"People kept calling me and saying, 'Can we have lunch?' I said I'm going to have to go back to work. My husband said, 'Put a price on yourself.'"

She started Charlotte Gadberry Consulting, advising "almost every nonprofit in town" on fundraising and development. In that role, Gadberry doesn't engage in much fundraising directly, but rather helps nonprofits do it better themselves.

"What I do is train people to go out and make calls. I do role playing. I work with [nonprofits] in developing their boards, in training their staffs and training their boards. Training their board members is really the key."

Tedford says a big part of Gadberry's success is "the incredibly large number of people that she is interconnected with. Everywhere we go out to dinner, there's always someone coming over to talk to her."

Gadberry has served as president or chairman of the Rotary Club of Little Rock, the Centers for Youth & Families and Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She was one of the Junior League members who launched Riverfest in 1978.

Hupp remembers how Gadberry helped him when he was new to Little Rock and she was serving on the board of the repertory theater.

"She was fantastic about introducing me to people and instrumental in getting me connected to the business and philanthropic community," he says. Asked what makes Gadberry successful, Hupp says, "She's informed, she's tenacious, and she's passionate. That's an amazing combination."

In spring 2012, Charlotte and Jim Gadberry drove into Charleston, S.C. Although they hadn't planned it, they arrived in the middle of Spoleto. Begun in 1977, it's considered one of the nation's premier performing arts festivals. About 70,000 people attend some 150 performances spread over 17 days.

"It was just electric," Charlotte says. "People all over the streets. Everybody's smiling. We're like, 'What's going on here?'"

Hotels and restaurants throughout the city were full, and other businesses seemed to benefit as well. "I went into a shoe store and the owner was just thrilled we were there," Gadberry says. "It's done wonders for Charleston."

Gadberry was galvanized by the idea of what a similar festival could do for central Arkansas. Back home, she started calling up contacts in the arts and business worlds. Although Hupp says he was on board from the start -- "Charlotte would never bring me an idea that's crazy" -- another old friend, Tedford, admits he had his doubts.

"Early on, I was trying a little bit to discourage her. It's an extraordinary thing to do. She's at the age most of us are kicking back with the grandkids. Here she's taking on a project of enormous complexity and difficulty."

Tedford says he also pointed out that Charleston "is one of the most visited cities" in America.

"But nothing would deter her," says Tedford, who is now fully behind Acansa. "She really is one of those people who ... sees something that will make an impact on central Arkansas."

Gadberry says she never could have organized Acansa in two years without the help of a long list of people, including the festival's executive director, Renay Dean; two associate directors, Linda Newbern and Lisa Brannum; and advisory board members such as Hupp; Philip Mann of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra; Todd Herman of the Arkansas Arts Center; Christen Pitts of Theatre Dance; North Little Rock developer and gallery owner John Gaudin; marketing executive Melissa Thoma; and lawyer Joe Kolb.

"It's just an amazing group of volunteers," she says. Of the city's major arts institutions, she says, "I don't think they've ever worked completely together, and that was one of our goals."

Gadberry says she left the festival programming decisions to volunteers with expertise in the arts. Meanwhile, she got elected officials on both sides of the Arkansas River to endorse the project and set about raising money. A key early commitment was $50,000 from the Arkansas Arts Council. To date, about $325,000 in cash has been raised, plus another $150,000 in pro bono work from area businesses.

Gadberry, who also attended Spoleto in 2013, says she has gotten valuable advice from its organizers. She is well aware of the challenges that Spoleto went through before becoming successful. Asked how many people she thinks will attend Acansa events, she says, "We really don't know. We're making up a lot of it as we go. We talked about 5,000 [tickets sold] for the first year, but ..."

There's a carryover of $30,000 built into the Acansa budget for next year's operations.

The festival kicks off Tuesday with a reception at the Arkansas Governor's Mansion, hosted by first lady Ginger Beebe. Then follow five days of events spread among 17 venues, from performances by local groups such as Arkansas Festival Ballet and the Arkansas Chamber Singers to appearances by out-of-state artists including organist Hector Olivera; Street Corner Symphony, an a cappella group from Nashville, Tenn.; mime Bill Bowers; puppeteer Phillip Huber; and others. There will be exhibits of work by Mike Disfarmer, the acclaimed photographer of rural America in the 1930s and 40s, plus stagings of the play Disfarmer, and an exhibit by Evan Lindquist, a printmaker and the state's artist laureate. Educational talks over brown bag lunches and a late-night gig by the Bat-or-Kalo Trio at Vino's are on the slate.

For a complete list of events, go to AcansaArtsFestival.org.

Gadberry says one of the events she's most looking forward to is a show by the Dallas Black Dance Theatre. Another is Artists in the Park, which will be held in MacArthur Park form noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and is free. The day starts with activities and a concert for children, followed by family-oriented entertainment by longtime local favorites Greasy Greens and other bands.

"One of our goals is to bring people in who have not been involved in the arts," Gadberry says.

Recently, as the festival approached, Gadberry drove a car full of Acansa posters, brochures and signs around town. The festival has been a full-time, unpaid job for some time now. Her commitment might seem a little strange considering that she strongly disavows any artistic ability herself.

"We just enjoy the arts," she says. "It brings something to your life that nothing else does."

Jill Johnson, her daughter, sees it differently.

"I think effective leadership is really an art form, and mom is a leader," she says. "She has pulled together so many people to put this together. It's been exciting to watch that. I'd call that a work of art."

High Profile on 09/21/2014

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