05/07/2026
Last fall, Historic DeSoto Theatre Foundation was one of three theatres in Georgia invited to apply to a new Fox Gives Multi Year Grant, a potential $500,000 award to be distributed over 2-4 years. We’re so proud to report that yesterday, Fox Gives / The Fox Theatre awarded us the grant!!
Y’all, this doesn’t happen overnight! We submitted our application mid-January and made it to the second round. In early March, the Fox Theatre’s CEO Allan Vella, Community Partnerships Director Leigh Burns, and Fox board members, met with City of Rome, GA - Government officials and with HDTF board and community members, getting an in-depth look at our theatre, our backstage project, and the potential impact for our community.
In the grant, we described the impact of everything that happens in our building alongside our partners: from fabulous Rome Little Theatre, Inc performances, to the Rome International Film Festival’s year-round films and conversation-starting documentaries, to Seven Hills Fellowship’s Sunday Services that for so many years have provided us with financial stability and support. Community rentals, children’s shows, meetings, fundraising concerts…and strong leadership from HDTF Board President Leanne Hand Cook!
We also described the amazing support from our community for Capital Projects and renovations: from Fox Gives since 2008, Georgia Council for the Arts, lead donors such as our dearest Villa Hizer, Pat and Wayne Vick (who lovingly danced under the marquee as teenagers), Linda and Jim Owens, Wes Walraven, Sylvia and Randy Eidson, Karen Smith (whose husband Gary was Cpt. Von Trapp on the first RLT play at the DeSoto in 1982), the City of Rome, Vicki and Lynn Whatley ( Lynn helped dig out the pit in 1992!!) Marquee Sponsor Ryan Cox Orthodontics, Wright Ledbetter (who as Rome Area Council for the Arts (RACA) president brought to us their support, and recently started a personal challenge gift for stage-naming), Black Bear Construction/David and Caroline Clonts, Interior Designer Tommy Lam (whose grandfather built the DeSoto in 1928), plus all our O.C Lam Legacy Society lead donors, and SO SO SO MANY MORE!!! Suffice it to say, it seems that our community support and what happens on our stage impressed the Fox!
Without the support from our partners, every single donor, performer, audience member and volunteer, this generous grant award would not have found its way to our Rome and NWGA community. We still have more fundraising, more grant-writing, more projects, more work to do, and know you’ll continue to help us. But make no mistake: it is thanks to ALL of you that “The Stage is Set” for the next century of the DeSoto!
