Tim and Audrey Fisher with Pink Martini
Donor Story
Tim Fisher
Investing for the Future
For a town of its size, the cultural life of Santa Barbara is impressively full, say patrons Tim and Audrey Fisher. The couple have been involved with UCSB Arts & Lectures since they bought a home in Montecito in 2000, and attended their first performance at Campbell Hall shortly afterward.
Miller McCune Executive Director Celesta Billeci and her team introduced themselves at intermission and the rest, as they say, is history. “We’ve been great friends ever since – we just love them,” says Audrey, a fashion designer and the retired president of a custom couture clothing business.
Tim was part of the creation of the Arts & Lectures Council in 2013. As a Council member, Tim guided the establishment of A&L’s legacy giving program and advocated enthusiastically for planned giving, including making a generous irrevocable, outright commitment to A&L in his estate plan. As he puts it, “Bequests and other planned gifts are elegantly simple - in most cases it requires only a paragraph in your will or trust.”
Supporting A&L is a family affair for the Fishers. As chair and a trustee of the Audrey Hillman Fisher Foundation, Audrey has given generously to A&L. Their son Matthew has sponsored musical performances and Tim and Audrey have supported a variety of events over the years, ranging from Joe Biden to the Vienna Philharmonic.
The Fishers split their time between Santa Barbara and their hometown of Pittsburgh, and the cultural offerings of A&L make it easier for them to go from a bigger place to a smaller place. “In the early 70s Jack Heinz created the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust which is a really big arts organization. Their budget is over 50 million and they have five theaters and they own a lot of downtown real estate. It’s a big operation, but I would say that we probably attend more events per year in Santa Barbara,” says Tim. “The cultural life here is every bit as full, in large part thanks to A&L.”