Giving up on philanthropy?

Support for efforts to generate new revenue streams from sponsorship and donations is too little and too slow, according to a new study exploring the cultural sector’s perceptions of the Coalition’s arts philanthropy agenda. The research, conducted by the agency Arts Quarter (AQ) among 361 arts organisations across all artforms and scales, reveals that the sector feels some progress has been made in building fundraising skills, promoting legacies and launching a matched fund programme for the arts; but three -quarters expressed dissatisfaction with progress on fostering corporate giving. The DCMS designated 2011 the Year of Corporate Philanthropy, aiming to stimulate more arts investment by the business sector. However, figures produced earlier this year by Arts & Business (AP249) found that business support for the arts continued its downward trend in 2010/11, falling by 7% to a seven-year low. The wider reforming of policy to increase giving potential and the creation of opportunities for the sector to build stronger links with charities are also areas that respondents felt have been neglected so far.

The Philanthropy in the Arts Agenda was launched by Jeremy Hunt in December 2010 (AP230), when he announced a series of measures and an £80m fund to help arts organisations develop revenue streams from endowments, legacies and donations. The first major initiative, launched in June last year, was Arts Council England’s £40m ‘Catalyst Arts’ scheme (AP238). It is recognised by respondents as the greatest achievement in the implementation of the Agenda so far. However, the majority feel that Catalyst itself will be insufficient to develop fundraising capacity and encourage giving: 84% of theatre respondents believe that the matched funding of Catalyst will not work effectively to incentivise greater levels of giving to the arts.

Organisations report varying stages of readiness to engage in fundraising, especially at board level. Only a third feel that all members of their boards are fully involved with their fundraising strategy and 20% feel that board members have no appreciation at all of the need for fundraising. As for board support with ‘giving or getting’ – making donations themselves or approaching potential donors – less than 20% of respondents said that their trustees are proactive. Legacy fundraising is another area where organisations are still making little headway: only 28% of respondents actively promote the idea of legacy giving among their supporters; and 21% believe that such activity is inappropriate.

The report concludes that a degree of cynicism is emerging over the effectiveness of the measures put in place so far to provide support to the sector. John Nicholls, Founder and Managing Partner of AQ, said: “The Agenda was created with a view to all arts organisations being able to benefit. What is becoming clear is that some have the potential to benefit, but the speed of progress means that few are doing so thus far. For others, nothing is being implemented from which they can benefit. The fear now is that Catalyst will in itself create a two-, possibly three-speed arts community with funded organisations embarking on endowment or larger-scale annual revenue campaigns to the detriment of those who are not Catalyst funded.”