If only our boards had deep pockets, or friends with deep pockets then life would be so much simpler. That’s very true and it seems – following an Arts & Business conference on Twitter last week, and from the topics to be discussed at the forthcoming Clore/ Cultural Leadership Programme on Governance – that many of us are currently thinking about the role our boards can play in fundraising or ‘the US model’ as we sometimes refer to it.
But this worries me, for three reasons:
1. Fundraising isn’t the sole – or most important – role of the Board
The three most important roles of the Board are:
- To appoint, support and monitor the CEO – I’ve been talking to many current arts leaders and recruitment professionals about this lately in relation to my research and there’s consensus that Boards could improve in this area – more on that another day.
- To be ‘guardians of the mission’ (to borrow a phrase from Adrian Ellis), ensuring that the organisation is true to its core mission. Ellis suggets this role is best fulfilled by ‘artists’ on the Board as they understand the mission better than anyone. I would argue either they need also to be audience champions (and there are plenty of artists that are) or there also need to be guardians of the mission on board who understand the audience engagement side of the mission.
- To take a long-term view of the mission and organisation, beyond this year’s programme.
2. Boards should reflect the diversity of society not just those with big pockets
If our Boards are populated primarily with those who are able to provide major gifts – or connected to those that are – then we leave the accountability of our organisations in the hands of an economic elite and I believe that Boards need to reflect the beneficiaries we exist to serve: including artists and audiences. A couple of weeks ago I heard Martin Bright (of New Deal of the Mind) talking passionately about class being the biggest barrier in the cultural sector – his point being that we draw our workforce primarily from a social elite. This is even more true of our Boards. Class is the biggest determinant of participation in culture – according to ACE research cite in John Holden’s excellent Culture and Class. If we are to reach a wider audience then it’s important our Boards and staff reflect the wider population – this is a debate that’s been well rehearsed in terms of ethnicity but I believe applies to all forms of diversity.
3. Boards should be – primarily – strategic
It can be dangerous when Boards get involved in the nitty gritty. Granted if the Board had skills and connections which can directly benefit the organisation you’d be daft not to avail yourself, but this needs to be underpinned by a clear understanding of respective roles and responsibilities otherwise you risk the Board getting into micro-management and failing to deliver its key functions.
So let’s seek funds where ever we can – and that should involve the Board. One the the key fundraising tips I picked up (from John Nickson, former Director of Development at Tate) was to be a donor yourself. Giving helps you understand donors, and if you don’t support the charity you’re seeking funds for – why should anyone else put their hands in their pocket?
But let’s remember, there are other – equally if not more – important things that we need from our Boards.
One of the terms used by a lot of people at last week’s Culture Change conference was ‘investment’: whether that was Joe Ludlow’s rallying cry about arts and cultural organisations needing to develop more of an ‘investment mindset’ or Andrew Barnett’s distinction between funders who simply ‘shop’ and those who really ‘invest’ in organisations, thereby building their future capacity rather than cherry-picking. The conference was videoed and those – and other – contributions will soon be available to view online and I’d highly recommend them (plus David Lan and Cat Harrison in particular).
In the workshops, I was also struck by how frequently people spoke about their assets – which included their brand (as Julia Twomlow’s contribution about The Leach Pottery demonstrated), as well as buildings, their wider IP (as used by Live Theatre to develop an online writing course) and most importantly their audience base. As part of the workshop I chaired – which was ostensibly about revising our approach to money – discussion very quickly turned to taking a fresh look at our assets, and how what audiences and users value in terms of our services and facilities are not necessarily the same things we might think of. For example, a Manchester music venue running courses and events for young people might appeal to the parents of those kids because of its connections with their own youth.
As part of the Capital Matters research, along with Holly Tebbut and Rohan Gunatillake, I undertook a series of in-depth interviews with 27 leading arts and cultural organisations and one of the main features we noticed that united many of them was a very strong focus on their audiences/ users/ participants. Many were using technology to achieve deeper connections with their audiences (either via social media or customer relationship management software), whereas others relied on the more traditional volunteering programmes and collaborative leadership approaches which sought to develop strong ownership of the organisation among its communities – geographic or special interest. Co-production or co-creation was an increasingly common feature of how they were working.
I was encouraged in my workshop by this emphasis on understanding audiences and seeing them as the key focus for ensuring ACOs are more resilient (as volunteers, advocates, customers, donors, members etc). In these terms, ‘investing’ in understanding and developing relationships makes sense as a business strategy.
Another example of this ‘investment mindset’ is the wedidthis crowdfunding platform, profiled at the conference, which seeks to develop a new kind of relationship between audiences and artists/ arts organisations. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m keenly interested in this model in which deeper engagement with audiences results in wider support for artists and arts organisations – both financially and as advocates.
It struck me that ‘investing’ might be a useful way to think about these new relationships which crowdfunding both enables and relies on. I made my first donation via wedidthis last week (BTW it was this project if you’d like to try) and was struck that the range of ‘benefits’ I was offered in return for my support included recognition but also access to the artistic process (through conversations about the work in progress, attending the private view, visiting the studio with a curator – depending on the level of donation). Higher level fundraising has long used the lure of backstage or the studio to engage donors, keen for a peek into the mystique of the creative process. Crowd-funding is now seeding some new models for this opening up of opportunities to engage – which will result in increased donations but also increased understanding.
Some at the conference expressed reservation that crowd-funding meant giving up artistic control or would result in ‘popular’ (i.e. bad) lowest-common-dominator art. If we see low-level individual giving simply as a transaction then that’s a risk – is we force our audiences/customers to stay in ‘shopping’ mode. But if we think about that relationship in terms in ‘investing’ – and we invest in our audiences/ donors by opening up the creative process to them in return for their interest and support then I think we could really see some significant returns on our investment.
Income from legacies (or gifts in wills), including into endowment funds, is an important part of fundraising for many charities and worth around £2 billion each year in the UK alone. And yet according to a recent report that landed on my desk today (courtesy of the excellent Third Sector Foresight) it’s still a relatively uncommon area of philanthropy for the arts and cultural sector. Given this current government’s emphasis on endowment models for the arts and cultural sector, and the endless quest to find new sources and models for most arts and cultural organisations, the report makes useful reading.
Legacy Fundraising in the UK Cultural Sector (executive summary available on request from Legacy Foresight – an organisation specialising in legacies giving to charities which co-authored the report with Arts Quarter) is based on a survey of 200 arts and cultural organisations which form the baseline for ongoing research into trends in legacy giving in the arts. The authors find that despite overall growth in legacy income to the arts in the past decade, the arts are still small players. Arts legacies account for only 3% of all money left to charity and 1% of total arts sector annual income (compared with nearer 6% income across all charities). These figures would suggest significant potential for continued growth. Other key findings from this report are that current legacy giving is dominated (like individual giving more generally and high net worth individual giving in particular), by a small number of larger and often national institutions. However, less than half the respondents are actively promoting legacies to their supporters and if you don’t ask you are very unlikely to receive. In terms of awareness of best practice in legacy fundraising only one-third of respondents had sought information – often through professional bodies such as the Institute of Fundraising. Awareness of successful ‘legacy brands’ (i.e. charities who are good at raising from this source) was also low. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that relative income from legacies in low in the arts sector given these low levels of awareness of legacy fundraising approaches and investment in marketing this model to supporters.
So what evidence does this report include that suggests that legacy fundraising might be worth investing in for smaller arts and cultural organisations?
First there is the argument about potential market – when benchmarked against the wider charity sector the arts is under-performing.
Second, the sector is already experiencing good levels of growth – an average annual 10% growth in income from legacies to arts and education charities over recent year between 2004/5 and 2008/09.
Before investing more in legacy fundraising though we are wise to ask whether there are some types of organisations which are more attractive prospects for legacy funding – as is so clearly the case with other areas of philanthropy? The authors suggest that in the charities sector it’s not just larger charities that benefit from legacies – smaller community groups are beginning to make in-roads too. But some types of organisations (medical research, hospices, animal and children’s charities) are the star performers – and we would be wise to reflect on what the arts can offer to a very different type of donor. It’s clear legacy fundraising is not a quick fix for the arts sector – but it could play a larger part in our income models in the longer-term, if we invest in developing our awareness and relationships with potential donors. Wider demographic trends indicate a healthy future for legacy giving (with our Baby Boomers coming of age for leaving legacies in the not too distant future – to be blunt and a bit mercenary about it) and the report concludes that ‘arts organisation are well placed to benefit from this surge in income, providing they are able to communicate their need effectively and intelligently, in line with their values.’
Presumably the motivation of legacy donors and the types of things they want to support are quite different to the project fundraising with which I am more familiar – I suspect it’s a more akin to philanthropy for capital fundraising. I say ‘presumably’, because like many in the arts sector I’ve not actually tried it yet – but this report makes clear there’s plenty of expertise in the wider non-profit fundraising community where we can turn to learn from their experience.
 donation boxes in Sheffield's Millennium Galleries Here’s a New Year’s Resolution I’d like you all the consider. Next time you visit a gallery or museum which is free to enter make a contribution on your way out – either join the members’ scheme and/or make a cash donation in one of the growing number of donation boxes in the foyers.
We don’t expect theatres to be free, or cinemas, or country houses – so why expect our galleries and museums to provide us with free access? It’s a historical anomaly that we don’t expect to pay to enter museums and galleries which leaves us with limited options for how to generate or raise the income required to stage exhibitions and purchase artworks for collections.
If we value access being free at the point of entry (as I think we do) then we need to face up to the fact that someone somewhere has to pay and we all need to put our hands in our pockets. Whilst many galleries and museums are very enterprising with their retail and catering operations only the largest make significant income in this way – and others (particularly the smaller organisations) lack the facilities to trade in this way.
Give what you think the gallery deserves – we paid £26.50 for four hours at The Deep aquarium this weekend for two adults and two young kids, I’ve not yet given that much to a museum where I’ve spent all day for free but perhaps we should be thinking along those lines. But let’s not run before we can walk – if we only gave £2-£3 per head this would make a significant difference to galleries. For an average large regional gallery that would be an extra £300-500K per year, or around 50% of its subsidy or 30-40% of its total income. That kind of money would make a phenomenal difference to the financial health of our gallery sector – and perhaps encourage galleries to take a keener interest in their visitors’ satisfaction. Personally, I like to do my bit to reward good curating by giving different amounts according to how much I valued the exhibition – it’s my one-woman attempt to provide the customer-focus too often missing from my sector.
Galleries need to up their game in how we are asking too. One gallery Director told me that five years ago they’d never had a prominently placed donations box and yet in its first year they collected over £100,000 – simply by placing a box and a sign in the foyer. Sheffield Museums and Galleries have two boxes – if you liked the show then they ask for funds toward future exhibitions, if you didn’t like it then they invite you to support their education programme (not sure what that says about their learning team ? Doesn’t sound healthy). I’m sure there are many other ways to get inventive about donations boxes – my kids pestered me out of a small fortune in coins for a game-based donations box at the Children’s Discovery Centre in Las Vegas…
So stop free-loading in galleries and museums – and help make them more audience-focussed in the process. Give, and give in an ostentatious manner so that people can see you give and think about giving themselves.
With public funding set to fall over the coming years those of us seeking funding for arts organisations and artists are always looking for new people and organisations who might support us, and new ways in which to encourage them to part with their cash. If you’re based outside of London – like many of us – then private sources of funding are few and far between.
Arts & Business’s own figures reveal that the English regions raise very little funds from the main three sources of private funds, with London dominating. Recent figures show:
68% of Trusts & Foundation giving
80% of corporate sponsorship and giving
90% of individual giving
goes to London.
Put simply, the opportunities for accessing private funds outside of London are far more limited.
So, forgive me if I don’t get too excited by the latest DCMS/ ACE challenge fund announcement today, following on the heels of the equally irrelevant endowments ‘solution’ to our funding woes. This new fund sounds rather similar to A&B’s old scheme – as does the emphasis on developing fundraising skills in the sector. I’m not dismissing philanthropy – it’s valuable, I’m sure many organisations could do better at it, and certainly for some, mainly very large, organisations endowments (partly funded by legacies perhaps) could be a valuable addition to the ever growing range of income generation options that most arts and cultural organisations are cultivating.
But I’m more excited about this kind of initiative wedidthis – launching in January – which seeks to encourage large numbers of people to engage with the arts through giving. Enabled by technology, this new form of crowd-funding or micro-philanthropy as it is variously called, offers both a new source of income for arts organisations and a new kind of relationship with their supporters. Rather than courting a handful of powerful individual donors, micro-philanthropy offers a more ‘democratic’ model where a broader range of people can afford to contribute. It’s closest to a subscription or membership model and has many of the same associated benefits in terms of the potential to develop deeper, long-term relationships with a group of supporters that can generate reliable income (including unrestricted income – depending on how you do it). Wedidthis embraces both the practical question of raising funds and the desire on the part of some arts organisations and audiences to have a closer, and more transparent relationship which enables new work to be supported and produced.
On their current publicity leaflets the Artfund’s marketing copy reads ‘Charles Saatchi isn’t the most important art collector in the UK – you are’ and micro-philanthropy embodies a similar philosophy – empowering those of us who aren’t high net worth individuals to become direct supporters of the organisations that matter to us personally. This is a particular challenge for the visual arts where raising donations is complicated by the expectation that visiting galleries is free. No-one wants to go back to charging for entry to museums (and few think anyone would come to contemporary galleries if there was a charge) but we do need some new ways to encourage low-level support in a sector which struggle to generate income in other ways.
There are clear links between micro-philanthropy and user-engagement and Web 2.0 culture too (hence the use of the term ‘crowd-funding’ which refers to ‘crowd-sourcing’). Micro-philanthropy (like volunteering) offers a way to capitalise on people’s engagement with your organisation in a way that underpins the business model – that sounds like win-win to me! And just as savvy arts organisations are able to encourage some of their repeat visitors to become members and then cajole some of these members go on to become higher-level donors – no doubt micro-philanthropy will develop similar ways to build loyalty and commitment over time – generating more support at all levels.
I’ll be interested to see how both public and arts organisations respond to wedidthis and similar initiatives – talking to people who run extremely successful membership organisations over the past couple of years, it’s clear that to really deliver both on mission and income generation there are two main critical factors:
1. Economies of scale – and hopefully the online platforms of crowfunding will enable this.
2. Developing the nature of engagement from a transaction to a longer-term relationship. In other words, for example, whilst people might initially join the National Trust because they calculate they will save money on entrance fees if they attend three times a year, what makes the NT one of the biggest and most successful charities is that people keep renewing their membership because over time they begin to appreciate the wider environmental work and campaigning role of the organisation and support this – without expecting a clear financial benefit in return for their annual fee. NCVO and RSA produced some very interesting research about this issue and their report about ‘The future of Membership‘ makes useful reading for anyone currently running or considering a membership scheme.
Above all micro-philanthropy will require a change in culture, from arts organizations and our publics. Organisations will need to work more openly, with more regard to their audiences/ supporters. And audiences will need to put our hands in our pockets (always difficult for a Yorkshirewoman like myself) if we want the arts experiences, empowerment and engagement that micro-philanthropy offers.
|
|
Mon 21st February 2011 10:35
(1)
Loading...
Recent Comments