Best 100 Communities for Music Education Survey: Participating Organizations

American Music Conference

AMC, founded in 1947 and based in Carlsbad, California, is dedicated to promoting music, music making and music education to the general public. AMC currently supports a variety of programs highlighting music's benefits for Americans of all ages, including a variety of music-brain research studies; the New Horizons Band, a groundbreaking program for beginning musicians age 50-plus at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY; and the advocacy efforts of the National Coalition for Music Education.

For more information, call Mary Luehrsen at (800) 767-6266 or visit www.amc-music.org.

The Metropolitan Opera Guild

The mission of The Metropolitan Opera Guild is to promote greater interest in opera and broaden the base of support for The Metropolitan Opera by reaching out to a wide public and serving as an educational resource that provides programs, publications, materials and services to schools, families, individuals and community groups nationwide.

For more information, call David Dik at (212) 769-7069 or visit www.operaed.org.

The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation

Inspired by the acclaimed 1995 motion picture Mr. Holland's Opus, and founded by the film's composer, the late Michael Kamen, The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation (MHOF) supports music education and its many benefits through the donation and repair of musical instruments to under-served schools, community music programs and individual students nationwide.

For more information, call Felice Mancini at (818) 784-6787 or visit www.mhopus.org.

Music for All

Music for All is a national non-profit organization committed to expanding access to music and the arts in education, to heightening the public's appreciation of the value of music and arts education, and to creating a positive environment for the arts through societal change.

For more information, call Bob Morrison at (908) 542-9396 or visit www.musicforall.org.

Music Teachers National Association

Founded in 1876 by noted music publisher and philanthropist Theodore Presser and sixty-two of his colleagues, Cincinnati-based MTNA is America's oldest professional music association. Its mission is to support music teaching and the art of music. Today, MTNA is a nonprofit organization of 24,000 independent and collegiate music teachers committed to furthering the art of music through teaching, performance, composition and scholarly research.

For more information, call Brian Shepard at (513) 421-1420 or visit www.mtna.org.

National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts

The National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts aims to make high quality arts education available to every interested child and adult in the United States. The Guild's national network encompasses arts education professionals, organizations, volunteers, and philanthropic supporters.  In concert with this network, the Guild researches and promotes best practices, provides opportunities for professional development and dialogue, and advocates for broad access.

For more information, call Andy Behrens at (212) 268-3337, ext. 10 or visit www.nationalguild.org.

National School Boards Association

The National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Virginia, founded in 1940, is a national advocacy organization representing the 95,000 local school board members who govern the nation's public schools. The organization's mission is to foster excellence and equity in public elementary and secondary education throughout the United States through local school board leadership. Through its affiliate, the National School Boards Foundation, the NSBA encourages and prepares local school board members to become catalysts for educational change and agents for systemic reform in the public schools.

For more information, call Joe Villani at (703) 838-6769 or visit www.nsba.org.

Perseus Development Corporation

Perseus Development Corporation of Braintree, Mass., is the market leader in developing and implementing web-based market research surveys. Founded in 1994 by software development and market research professionals, Perseus provides products to the business, healthcare, social science, education, government and professional research markets. Perseus designed the software for this survey, implemented it on the Internet, collected the data and processed the results.

For more information, call Nicholas D. Squires at (781) 848-8100, ext.301 or visit www.perseus.com.

Yamaha Corporation of America

Established in 1960, Yamaha Corporation of America offers a full line of musical instruments, audio/visual, and computer-related products in the United States. Yamaha Corporation of America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yamaha Corporation of Japan—the world's largest manufacturer of a full line of musical instruments—and is the largest of all global subsidiary companies. As the moving force behind the Yamaha Music Education System implemented in schools throughout the nation, Yamaha contributed its expertise in music education to the analysis of the survey data.

For more information, call Mike Bates at (714) 922-5011 or visit www.yamaha.com.

VH1 Save the Music

VH1 Save The Music Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of education in America's public schools by restoring music education programs in cities across the U.S. and raising awareness of the importance of music participation for our nation’s youth. Since VH1 Save The Music was created in 1997, $30 million worth of new musical instruments has been donated to over 1,200 public schools in 80 cities, improving the lives of more than 700,000 children.

For more information, call Laurie Schopp at (212) 846-5364 or visit www.vh1savethemusic.com.