Operating outside London provides its own fundraising challenges for arts organisations. We know that the lion’s share of public funding and private philanthropy is focused in London and the South East. So how do small organisations fare in the edges of the UK?
So lets get the bad news out of the way. In the whole of the UK, only parts of Wales and Cornwall are classified as “Less Developed Regions” by the European Union. This puts great swathes of the Principality on a par with most of Romania and Bulgaria in terms of economic activity. Much of Wales hits the top of the league tables when it comes to poverty and deprivation. Not the greatest environment for philanthropic fundraising of any kind.
These challenging conditions also provide some unique opportunities. European Structural Funding is available to many in the third sector and a handful of arts organisations have been able to access this money.
The Welsh Government is highly accessible and creative organisations have been very successful at accessing funding via education, tourism and economic development pots.
For larger organisations the picture is pretty positive. Over recent years there has been a real injection of energy and enterprise in fundraising terms. Since Devolution kicked off in 1999, the fundraising landscape has been dominated by organisations in the capital city. Cardiff is home to the Welsh National Opera, Wales Millennium Centre, Artes Mundi and National Theatre of Wales, to name a few who are all generating significant levels of support from sources outside the public sector.
And for smaller organisations that’s also where the problem lies – not in the capital, but in the sector’s continued reliance on the public purse.
The Garfield Weston Foundation was so worried about the lack of applications coming from charities in Wales, it commissioned a study at the end of 2015, to understand the fundraising readiness of small charities in Wales. The findings echoed a long held view that the Welsh voluntary sector as a whole is overly dependent on Government funding and that organisations are just not fundraising-ready.
Since the onset of the economic crisis, cuts to public funding of the arts have been relatively delayed in Wales, compared to England. This has masked the fact that many organisations are not ready to generate philanthropic support. As those cuts have eventually played out into budgets of local authorities and other public funders, the cracks are really starting to show.
We are seeing that old habits die hard. Deeply routed instincts to batten-down the hatches and wait for the good times to return, have been hard to undo. But for those who have understood the scale of the challenge and have been willing to act, there are positive signs.
So how are small organisations going from dependency on grants to diversity in their fundraising?
Those organisations that are investing in fundraising and trading are starting to create a stronger culture of philanthropy – creating a context for their customers to become donors and for the organisation to take fundraising seriously.
For many organisations that we work with, the challenge is not one of fundraising but is more to do with leadership, culture and communication.
Leadership
The Trustees of successful organisations understand that they need to have the skills to adapt to a new way of working and are recruiting fellow trustees that will “make the boat go faster” with experience, contacts and money. Business plans are now genuinely focused on investment in fundraising and diversification, not just written to please a single funder.
Culture
We are seeing the most successful organisations actively changing their practices to create a “project mentality” so they can present a clear case for support and can show real outcomes that will appeal to funders. They are also starting to behave differently to customer data – collecting it and seeing it as something that should be nurtured and understood with a view to long-term returns.
Communication
Building a clear, authentic and compelling case for support that runs through all of their communications, creating a steady drum-beat of the need for support. Crucially, we are seeing organisations laying the foundations for individual giving by introducing very simple changes:
- Starting by telling customers that they are a charity and that the ticket price doesn’t reflect the full costs of production
- Putting in place simple response mechanisms such as donate buttons positioned prominently on websites, collection boxes and offering the opportunity to top-up the ticket price
- Showing the difference that they are making in the world by telling the stories of change that their education and outreach work is achieving
Despite these positive signs, concrete results are few and far between. Government and the key institutions in Wales have been slow to wake up to the fact that most in the sector are far from ready to diversify their funding. There is no Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy programme for Wales. In a part of the UK that is so defined by creativity and the arts that ability to innovate and create will be tested to its limits in the coming years.
