Philanthropy
A fifth of what this house keeps
buys other artists a lawyer.
Twenty percent of the house’s net proceeds goes to The Legacy Foundation, quarterly, and specifically to the program that puts legal help in front of artists who could never pay for it.
The same thing we sell,
given away.
The whole argument of this house is that a career needs a lawyer at the start of it, when the terms are still open and nobody has signed anything. That is a real advantage. It is also expensive, and almost every artist working today will go an entire career without it.
So the house gives that advantage to people who are not its clients and never will be. It is the one form of giving that costs us something we actually have, rather than money we would like credit for.
The share
A fifth of net proceeds.
Twenty percent of the house’s net proceeds is committed to The Legacy Foundation. Not a percentage of profit after the house has decided what profit means, and not a figure revisited when a year is tight. It is taken off the top of what the house keeps, on the same terms in a quiet quarter as in a loud one.
The cadence
Every quarter, not every announcement.
The transfer happens quarterly, on a schedule, whether or not there is an occasion for it. Giving that appears when a house needs to be seen giving is marketing with a receipt attached. This is a standing instruction, and the point of a standing instruction is that nobody has to remember it.
The program
Lawyers, for artists who cannot afford one.
The money is directed to The Creative Trust, the foundation’s program for law, advocacy and the arts. That is deliberate rather than convenient. This house argues that a career needs a lawyer early, before the pressure arrives, and most artists will never be able to buy one. The Creative Trust is that same service, given to people who are not our clients and never will be.
The recipient
Who receives it,
and our interest in them.
- Organization
- The Legacy Foundation
- Status
- 501(c)(3) public charity, established 2006
- EIN
- 20-4557510
- Program
- The Creative Trust · Where law and advocacy meet the arts
Our founder chairs the foundation’s board, and you should know that before you read anything else on this page. The foundation publishes Maison as one of its collaborators, and describes itself as the philanthropic partner of The Clemenza Group. This is money moving between organizations run by people who know each other, which is exactly the arrangement a reader is entitled to be told about rather than left to find.
What it is not is money moving in a circle. The foundation is a registered public charity with its own board and its own filings, the program takes applications from artists with no connection to this house, and none of it returns here.
Visit The Legacy FoundationOn saying so at all
A house that gives quietly and never says so is admirable. A house that publishes the rule can be held to it.
This page exists for the second reason. The share, the cadence and the recipient are all written down here so that anyone can ask whether it happened, which is the same reason the Maison Standard publishes its clocks. The house would rather be checkable than admired.