Local Motives had announced last November that it was awarded a multi-year grant of $120,000 in matching funds from the Levitt Foundation to present a free outdoor music series at Citizens Alley in downtown Minot in each of the next three years. Yazowski came to Citizens Alley Thursday to see the venue firsthand.

Thursday’s event featured an Afrocentric beat from OBI Original & the Black Atlantics, with The Shaky Calls as opener. The audience also was given a sneak peek from the Theodore Roosevelt Foundation in Medora of its newest show, Rebels & Outlaws.

Minot did a fantastic job of developing its music series lineup, Yazowski said.

“Levitt is all about providing a variety of musical experiences for the community, so that means booking a range of artists and music genres, and if you look at their lineup, they’ve done a great job of bringing a broad array of musical talent, diverse music genres, so the community can have a range of musical experiences, discover acts that they might not have heard before and become new fans of those bands and artists,” she said. “It’s really an exciting lineup that also includes local and regional talent. It’s always great to showcase the music that has come from your own roots. So, I think they’ve done a beautiful job in this year’s first lineup, and really giving people a taste of what’s to come in future years, in terms of the music series.”

JILL SCHRAMM/MDN Minot artist EJ Rose displays some of his paintings at his booth set up at the Levitt Amp Minot event Thursday, June 11. Along with concerts, the event included art and food vendors.

As a grant-making organization, the Levitt Foundation assists nonprofits across the country in presenting free music series.

“We also believe that it’s important to provide resources and support, so those nonprofits receiving the grants can be effective in presenting the concert series through the lens of building community through music,” Yazowski said.

Finding that success requires building partnerships and being intentional in the use of a venue to showcase the assets within the community, including other nonprofits and local vendors, she said.

“We put together resources, toolkits, consultation, so our grantees can learn that presenting a concert series goes far beyond booking a band and plugging in a sound system. It’s about working in partnership with your community, with other nonprofits, with local business, so that everyone feels invested in how the concert series comes to life. We provide peer to peer networking. We bring all of our grantees to Los Angeles for a learning conference, so they can exchange ideas, inspire each other, learn from each other’s challenges and best practices, and then we provide the opportunity for our grantees to connect online throughout the year through our Levitt Connect sessions,” Yazowski said.

The toolkit also includes checklists, best practices and protocols that grantees can put into action. Many nonprofits are small grassroots organizations, often all or mostly volunteer based, Yazowski noted. With guidance from the toolkits, the grantees get a jumpstart on the work, she said.

JILL SCHRAMM/MDN Bill Scott Sheets with Rebels & Outlaws, the new show at Medora this summer, performs a sample from the show during the Levitt Amp Minot series at Citizens Alley Thursday, June 11.

“We have national consultants that are accessible to all of our grantees in artist booking and routing, in security and safety, and then our own team are experts in the many aspects of producing a live concert series. So, we have seen that the actual grant is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how we support our grantees, and we very much believe in being in relationship with our grantees, getting to know them as people in their communities, getting to know the community, so we can be responsive to their needs as nonprofit organizations,” she said.

To get to know Minot, Yazowski, a Nebraska native now of Los Angeles, made her first trip to North Dakota Thursday to be at Citizens Alley’s second show of the 10-week season.

Yazowski joined Levitt in 2007 as the first executive director of Levitt Pavilion Los Angeles. She then transitioned in 2009 to executive director of the Levitt Foundation as the foundation’s first employee and was named chief executive officer in March 2023, according to her Levitt Foundation biography.

Yazowski is credited with transitioning the foundation to a trust-based philanthropy model early on in her tenure. She has guided the growth of Levitt programs across the country to include more than 70 towns and cities, including the development of long-term public/private partnerships in major U.S. cities, expanding grant programs into rural areas and sustainability strategies for Levitt grantees.

In terms of long-term sustainability, the Levitt Foundation typically funds multiple grant cycles for its grantees, Yazowski said. More than half of grantees receiving assistance for an initial three-year period apply and receive assistance for another three years, she said.

JILL SCHRAMM/MDN Citizens Alley hosted a second week of the Levitt Amp Minot music series Thursday, June 11.

“We give them plenty of lead time of when our funding might go away, but we are one piece of the funding pie for all of our concert sites. We come in with a substantial grant, but to produce the concert series is twice that amount. So other local funders, sponsors, donors come to the table and support the concert series from the get-go,” she said. “Then when you see the impact of the concert series, it inspires additional funders to come to the table and support the work. We have seen most of our concert series continue beyond our funding, because they’ve been positioned for success. There’s been tremendous impact that has inspired other funders coming to the table, community ownership, community excitement, and that momentum continues long term.”