Within the arts sector, there’s been a paucity of knowledge about the behaviour of audiences who give at a low level to arts and cultural organisations.
Challenges in this area are to do with the quality and quantity of data, how and what is collected and where data sits in the organisation. Even organisations that have member schemes and know a lot about their subscribers have gaps in their understanding of what else their supporters do, other memberships held and causes they give to.
We have subsequently developed a robust set of survey questions on cultural giving motivations and behaviours, published insights on our research findings and developed a training course on the use of data for fundraising with Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy.
This course in particular has acted as a catalyst for fundraisers to enable them to think more strategically about managing and understanding data for specific purposes. Outcomes reported from attenders include better understanding of the challenges with CRM systems; the relevance of segmentation; being able to hear and share others’ experiences (and solutions) of universal issues and the opportunity to practically apply theory to create a giving or membership campaign.
Headline findings
Our research findings convey useful insights on giving behaviour and audience motivations for the sector as a whole, of which some key headlines include:
- Regularity and length of engagement are indicators of propensity to give and also drives the decision making process.
- Low level givers are much more likely to be members or retained bookers who have visited over a period of time and who still visit frequently.
- The audience profile of givers, mainly in terms of age, education and their level of engagement with the arts/cultural organisation is a determining factor in their commitment to give.
- Low-level transactional “asks” work, however regular attenders could be encouraged to give further through more targeted asks.
- Transactional donations at point of purchase might yield less per booker but are not resource intensive, capture gift aid data and appeal to both new and longer term audiences.
- Many audiences who give also support a range of different non-arts charitable causes, in fact those highly engaged with the arts, are the most active givers across all charities.
- Competition for audiences’ attention and donation is fierce; highlighting organisations’ charitable status, and the difference donations make, could shift the balance of giving more towards cultural organisations.
- Attenders are attracted to friends or membership schemes purely for the benefits they receive in return. This has implications for the design of membership schemes, and the careful calculation and monitoring of net value.
- Once subscribed to a scheme, however, some people continue to do this even if they don’t attend, implying that membership provides a framework for philanthropic giving.
- Audience awareness of how to support either the organisation they attend or other organisations they visit is low; schemes need strong, consistent promotion – of how as well as why.
The insights from this research (funded by Arts Council England) have enabled us to develop some free tools to assist organisations’ fundraising efforts. These address key aspects of low-level donor and member behaviour to help us understand who has propensity to give and under what circumstances. You can access these here.
