It was the tumultuous year of 1968 when the Music Center of Los Angeles County pioneer Dorothy Buffum Chandler rounded up her socially prominent friends to create the Blue Ribbon women’s volunteer support group, charged with finding funds to aid downtown’s burgeoning performing arts complex on Bunker Hill.

They became known as “The Amazing Blue Ribbon 400.” Each was asked to secure a $1,000 donation toward the creation of a new performing arts center, which became a touchstone of the city’s cultural life – often a factor when it comes to recruiting top executive talent, and likely more so in the 1960s, when Los Angeles had yet to establish a significant reputation for the arts beyond the movie business.

Chandler wielded her considerable power as the wife of then-Los Angeles Times publisher Norman Chandler to make sure the group’s members and their activities often dominated the daily’s society pages. The list of first-year members, written this way in a history of the organization, included Mrs. Walter Annenberg (Lee), Mrs. Howard F. Ahmanson (Caroline) and Hollywood notables including Mrs. Lew R. Wasserman (Edith) and Mrs. Samuel Goldwyn (Frances).

Newspaper society pages are largely a thing of the past 50 years on, and far more of L.A.’s women are busy with full-time careers. One prominent female philanthropist who asked not to be named called Blue Ribbon “brand challenged” by decades of being depicted in the press as a de facto lunch club for the social elite.

The looming portrait of a gowned “Buff” Chandler sporting a queenly tiara in the Founders Room of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion does call to mind an era, and an attitude, long past in today’s Los Angeles. Social circles and notions of diversity have grown much broader since the 1960s, an era that saw the nation wracked by divisions over the Vietnam War and Los Angeles torn by rioting as well as the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy during the presidential election season at the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard.

Is there call for a “women-only support group” in 2018?

Blue Ribbon leadership and a number of longtime observers of the group answer with a resounding yes.

“They have always been ahead of their time in my mind,” said Howard Sherman, the Music Center’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, who’s held various operations positions there since 1986. “Back in the day, they were the wives of business leaders, but they were so much more than that.

“They supported downtown before it was the thing to do, and they supported making the arts accessible to everyone,” Sherman said. “They’ve kept up with the times, now (many are) the leaders of Los Angeles who happen to be women. It’s a very different organization, but it absolutely has the same philosophy and mission that it has always had.”

Dyan Sublett, president of MLK Community Health Foundation in South Los Angeles and co-founder of UCLA’s women and philanthropy program, is not a Blue Ribbon member, but said women’s organizations have value in both business and the nonprofit world.

“When we define it together, our voice can be heard,” she said. She added with a laugh that the kind of women who might join today are used to being the only woman in the room in corporate offices, so may find a comfort level among women that allows the team to get things done.

Sublett said that Dorothy Chandler might not have chosen her place in society, but was shrewd enough to use that power to her advantage in raising funds for the Music Center.

“She wielded it in the ways that were available to her at the time,” Sublett said. “In another era, she would have been a secretary of state, a Madeleine Albright. Instead, she succeeded as that traditional power behind the throne.”

Blue Ribbon President Jill Baldauf, associate dean of alumni relations at her alma mater, UCLA Anderson School of Management, said the group’s all-women membership and board is a matter of tradition, but also carries value for the group.

“It’s just part of the culture of how Blue Ribbon started,” said Baldauf, who has been part of Blue Ribbon since 2007 and also has been involved at the Music Center as co-chair of special events at LA Opera, a resident company.

“If there’s one thing I can say about Blue Ribbon, it’s (about) that culture – there is a beautiful graciousness and kind of inclusiveness in Blue Ribbon members that has carried over and is just part and parcel of the organization,” Baldauf said. “Being with women and finding out the incredible things these women have done, that’s what makes the organization perk along.”

Blue Ribbon is best known for its annual, free admission Children’s Festival, which brings more than 17,000 fifth graders from 234 Los Angeles County schools to experience the performing arts at the center.

Blue Ribbon also has contributed more than $75 million over its 50 years to the center’s education programs and resident performing arts companies, LA Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Center Theatre Group and the Master Chorale. Blue Ribbon also supports Music Center education programs and the relatively new Glorya Kaufman Dance at the Music Center programs.

Baldauf said Blue Ribbon’s 450 members pay annual dues of $2,500, although many donate much more. The dues plus other fundraising pays for the $250,000 Children’s Festival.

Baldauf said Blue Ribbon has launched a campaign to raise $4.5 million to add to its $6 million endowment.

The group recently received its first $500,000 toward that goal in March from Carrie Ketchum, who is married to real estate developer Stuart Ketchum.

The group distributes $1 million a year to resident companies and education and dance organizations.

Such donations might seem a drop in the bucket for the center’s powerhouse resident companies. The LA Philharmonic’s reported $110 million annual operating budget, for example, ranks it among the top three orchestras by that measure in the U.S.

Sherman said the gift Blue Ribbon gives the organization carries extra weight – the group’s connections and influence end up leveraging far more money and community support for the performing arts center.

And, while the Music Center and its resident companies collectively employ about 100 paid development staffers with salaries estimated between $60,000 and $100,000, Blue Ribbon remains entirely voluntary except for two administrative staff.

Constance Gavin, an actress and singer who has performed on Music Center stages, instituted the annual spring Celebration of Support during her tenure as Blue Ribbon president and chairman in 2010. The event features Blue Ribbon representatives physically handing checks to each resident company to make sure the women’s fundraising role gets its due, and thanks.

“During the children’s festival, these ladies who have beautiful homes and lovely lifestyles are at the Music Center at 8 a.m., wearing an apron and meeting school buses that bring (children) to a live performance,” Gavin said. “They want to help children, and make sure they are getting what they should be getting, and they are willing to work for it.

“I think we have a different image today. We are not elitists.”