The New Jersey Business & Industry Association and New Jersey Business magazine announced 20 recipients for their annual Awards for Excellence, honoring member companies and business leaders whose energy and vision have had a positive impact on their employees, their communities, and the state’s economy.
Hopewell Theater was honored with the Community Service Award, for companies committed to leadership in finding solutions to social or economic challenges.
“Forced to close for many months, New Jersey’s theaters and performance venues were thrust into dire circumstances that threatened their very existence,” New Jersey Business states in the award description. “Rising to the challenge, Hopewell Theater President and CEO Sara Scully took the extraordinary measure to create the New Jersey Independent Venue Association (NJIVA).”
NJIVA was formed in late 2020 as a way of uniting New Jersey’s independent venues through the difficulties posed to venues, theaters, and performing arts centers by the pandemic shutdown.
Through NJIVA, HT and Sara Scully brought together 20 organizations (now more) and a petition signed by more than 800 NJ residents to lobby the Governor’s Office and State Legislature for $25 million in relief funds through the CARES Act, which provides grants to NJ’s live performance venues.
Hopewell Theater strives to be an active member of the community, and is proud of the achievements venues and theaters across the state have made through NJIVA.
"We share this award with the residents and venues who fought hard for this, despite Covid keeping all of us apart. We came together to make this happen," says Scully. "We could not have done it without the enduring support of NIVA also, and my Hopewell Theater co-founder, Mitchel Skolnick."
Thank you to all the NJIVA Associates and their patrons who helped us get the federal relief funds we all needed to make it through the shutdown!
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