Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from the Arkansas Times, author Leslie Newell Peacock highlights a recent endowment by the Windgate Charitable Trust into arts education.

• Some may argue that arts education is not the most effecive cause to give to. What arguments would John Brown III present against this position?

• To learn more about the causal effects of arts education, click here.

The Windgate Charitable Trust has become the Johnny Appleseed of Arkansas arts education, planting multimillion-dollar art and design facilities on campuses across the state.

The latest to be announced: the Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. Windgate is putting up $20 million in matching funds for the university's $45 million project. UCA's students were "whooping and hollering," John Brown III, the former director of and now senior adviser to the foundation, said. "It was very moving."

At the Windgate Center groundbreaking in 2016 at UA Little Rock, a reporter asked what Brown described as a "combative" question: Why should Windgate care about art? What impact would it have on business? "My response was, 'Let me give you two words: Crystal Bridges.' "

Alice Walton's decision to build Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville "has made people realize that the arts can have an economic impact," said Horn, the chairman of the board at Windgate. "That's what [people are] looking for, something concrete that can be measured, and Crystal Bridges has done that. So we're augmenting the interest they have developed."

Bentonville's claim to fame was once that it was the headquarters of Walmart. Now it's also known as an arts mecca, with a world-class museum, a spruced-up downtown, new restaurants (newly serving alcohol), new public parks and bike trails for the new, young incomers. It's the fastest growing city in Arkansas.

Read the full article about arts education by Leslie Newell Peacock at Arkansas Times