Founded by guitarist Muriel Anderson, The Music For Life Alliance provides grants and fundraising support for non-profit organizations that provide instruments and/or lessons to kids who might not otherwise experience the joy of playing music. It is a 501c(3) tax exempt, not-for-profit charity that is funded primarily by Muriel Anderson’s All Star Guitar Night, Muriel’s solo concerts, and individual donations.
–Muriel Anderson, Founder
From Premier Guitar Magazine:
Muriel Anderson came up with the concept for the MFLA in 1998. After a series of thefts and break-ins in her neighborhood were attributed to drug-seeking youths, Muriel dug deeper and found only wealthy school districts in the area still had music education. “The root of the problem was that kids with emotional, spiritual and social needs found drugs much easier to come by than a guitar or a saxophone,” Muriel explains. “The self-actualization that playing an instrument provides can lift them up at a crucial time.”
She soon discovered there were already several organizations working individually on a local level, and her goal was to provide support and networking for these existing programs. “My vision was two-fold; first, I wanted to collect instruments for music programs in need, and second, I wanted to create a national database, giving grants and recognition to organizations making a difference in the lives of children through music.”
Ten years after Muriel’s original concept, the vision has come to fruition, with the help of dedicated volunteers (“I really couldn’t have done any of this by myself,” Muriel says). The MFLA hosts a database of 125 different national organizations that help further music education, and they work closely with groups across the country that collect and distribute instruments.
MFLA Secretary Treasurer John Wise says that each organization in the database is carefully evaluated. “We could just pull all of the 501s [charitable organizations] from the federal directory, but we research and have relationships with each one in the database.” He added that this is important because people who use the directory will know that each organization is completely legitimate and trustworthy.
The organizations range from Music for Lifetime Achievement, a St. Louis-based chapter of the MFLA that finds instruments and distributes them to children, to Guitars in the Classroom, a California program that helps teachers learn play guitar and how to incorporate the music into their own teaching. John estimates that Muriel comes up with about 50 percent of the organizations they help, finding many while on the road. In addition to helping organizations’ visibility, the MFLA also awards scholarships and grants to smaller organizations to help fund lessons, instrument repair and refurbishing.
