Seattle Musicians Access to Healthcare

Budget Size: Between 500k and 1MM

Region: Northwest

County: King

Mission Statement: To keep local musicians healthy, living and working in the Puget Sound region.

Community Accelerator Grant Award: $25,000

Primary Impact Category: Employment

Website: https://www.smashseattle.org/

SMASH holds two truths to be self-evident: the power of music and the extraordinary cultural value of the Puget Sound’s music community. “I truly believe that our region is special because of our music scene,” says SMASH’s Executive Director, Denise Burnside, “and that’s why SMASH exists: to help keep the incubator of ideas and creativity alive.” SMASH, or Seattle Musicians Access to Sustainable Healthcare, started its work in 2017 as a volunteer-led initiative working to address the impact of inflation and cost-of-living increases on Seattle-area musicians. By making medical, dental, and mental healthcare more accessible and affordable, the organization allows the artists it serves to focus their energy on growing their craft and giving back to the community.

Although SMASH is still less than a decade old, it has grown swiftly, and now facilitates healthcare needs for approximately three hundred people, offering free and low-cost services as routine as annual check-ups and as vocationally specific as vocal care and high-fidelity ear protection. In 2020, as musicians first began to reckon with the havoc the pandemic would come to wreak on their industry, SMASH brought on its first full-time staff members to help address the developing needs of the community. Their Community Accelerator Grant award has helped cover the costs of onboarding and training their newest hire, who is SMASH’s first employee dedicated entirely to member support. Denise says her work has proved essential in expanding the organization’s reach and providing personalized advocacy and care, particularly in the realms of mental health and substance abuse treatment.

Funding has also supported talent and production costs for SMASH’s largest annual event, their benefit concert at the Moore Theatre. “The concert is really how we get the word out,” says Nikki Barron, SMASH’s Communications & Outreach Manager. “Artists in town learn about us because of the show, and audience members become year-round supporters.” The benefit concert pairs eminent local musicians such as Stone Gossard, Shaina Shepherd, and Ben Gibbard with up-and-coming SMASH members to pay tribute to music legends such as David Bowie, Neil Young, and The Temptations. The team credits their Community Accelerator Grant with allowing them to increase their budget for artist compensation by 60% this year and raise their overall event budget by 50%, expenditures that they hope will help them hit their goal of onboarding 200 more new members by the end of December (effectively doubling their impact in a single year). By investing wholeheartedly in both the health of the music community and of its individual artists, SMASH is making the Seattle it wants to see: a place where musicians can thrive onstage and off, building vibrant and sustainable careers and lives.