Photo Credit: Boston.com

Congratulations to Club Passim for being one of the five ableGiving winners this past month. For their extraordinary efforts, ableBanking is proud to donate $1,000 toward their important work.

Since 1958, Club Passim has helped traditional, folk, and acoustic musical performers launch their careers by providing a venue full of avid music lovers and access to top-notch music education. Music icons like Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Tom Rush, Taj Mahal, and Suzanne Vega point to playing at Club Passim as one of their early career milestones.

According to executive director Dan Hogan, what makes Club Passim stand out is its strong community of avid music lovers that embraces these budding musicians. This community is also what drove Club Passim’s success in the ableGiving contest and helped them make it through a rough patch due to the recent economic turmoil. Now, they are on solid ground.

Located in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a charming space off of Harvard Square, Club Passim features over 400 performances each year. Last year, it provided music education and classes to over 700 students in several six-week-long sessions. Thanks to the generosity of donors, Club Passim is able to keep tuition low and give two-thirds of every ticket purchase directly to the artists – a far greater cut of the gate than most venues offer.

The $1,000 ableGiving prize will benefit all the programs at Passim, including the Iguana Music Fund, which awarded over $33,000 in grants to 20 different artists in 2012. These funds help musicians advance their careers in many different ways, whether that’s providing support to record a CD, fund their tours, purchase an important piece of equipment, or some other component of the career puzzle.

Every donation to Club Passim matters. A gift of $25 can make a big difference to the next musical icon – whether that’s helping pay his or her instructor, keeping ticket prices low, providing a piece of equipment, or giving musicians a chance to perform onstage at an Open Mic night. Learn more at http://www.passim.org.