Peggy Amsterdam
Peggy Amsterdam is President of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. The Cultural Alliance is the region’s leading nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the cultural sector, serving as a vital resource to its over 300 non-profit member organizations and the broader cultural community.
Amsterdam devotes much of her time meeting with constituents, supporters, and policy makers, and has earned wide praise and awards for her visibility, accessibility, and responsiveness to her members. As one of the region’s leading experts on arts and culture, she is frequently called on to write and comment for print and electronic media; testify at the PA State Capitol and Philadelphia’s City Hall; and speak at meetings of regional and/or national arts, philanthropic and economic development groups.
Under her direction, the Cultural Alliance produced and/or released three highly-credible and content-rich reports on the region's cultural sector in Portfolio, Arts and Culture in the Metropolis, and a soon-to-be-published economic impact study, based on local findings from Americans for the Arts' Arts & Economic Prosperity III. The research has provided an indispensable tool to arts managers and policymakers in understanding and quantifying culture's impact on the community.
Previously, the Alliance helped lead the efforts to restore 80% of Philadelphia Mayor Street’s proposed $4.4 million cut to arts and culture funding in Philadelphia’s FY2005 budget. In addition the Cultural Alliance has a successful sector-wide marketing campaign, highlighted by the newly redesigned PhillyFunGuide.com™ events calendar and popular FunSavers half-price ticket program.
President since 2000, Amsterdam has seen membership grow by fifty percent in her tenure. She has greatly enhanced the Alliance’s member services, creating a series of marketing initiatives that have expanded member benefits while successfully increasing awareness and participation in the arts. New marketing programs have included a $300,000 annual advertising cooperative; the country’s largest cultural mailing list; PhillyFunGuide.com, an award winning online events calendar; and the popular FunSavers half-price ticket program, which reaches 60,000 weekly email subscribers and delivers 30,000 tickets worth $450,000 a year back to Cultural Alliance members.
The Alliance has also disbursed grants totaling $1.48 million (over six years) through the 5-County Arts Fund, which provides seed capital for innovative, community-based arts projects. Administratively, the Alliance has increased its annual operating budget from $900,000 in FY2001 to $2.7 million in FY2007, and expanded its staff from nine to 18 FTE employees.
Amsterdam is a member of the Board of Managers of the Philadelphia Foundation; Executive Committee, Greater Philadelphia Convention & Visitors Bureau; and Forum of Executive Women, International Women’s Forum. She has been a frequent panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, and has served on the steering committee of the Arts Education Partnership and the boards of the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, and Wilmington Convention and Visitors Bureau. Amsterdam formerly served as Governor Tom Carper’s Director of the Delaware Division of the Arts from 1993- 2000 and was a founding member of the Delaware Arts Stabilization Fund, which now serves as a national model for private, public, and corporate collaboration for sustaining arts organizations. Amsterdam received a Master’s degree in art history and museum studies from The George Washington University.