It is heartening to see the visual arts leading the way in individual giving as part of the Private Investment in Culture survey and it is certainly my personal experience during the past 10 years at the Royal Academy of Arts and now at The Hepworth Wakefield. Indeed, I feel that the survey reflects my own personal journey from central London to the heart of Yorkshire which has proved to be a real ‘eye opener’. I had been warned that fundraising out of London would prove to be very different and far more difficult than my experience at Tate and Royal Academy – but nothing quite prepared me for what I found.
As the survey demonstrates, trust and foundation support is vital and ever more so outside London. However, as my team at The Hepworth Wakefield will attest to, my passion for individual giving and in particular membership schemes is proving to be more resilient and brimming with potential than corporate giving.
Why has the latter so significantly reduced? Corporate giving, in this climate of seeming corporate distrust, should be working hard on behalf of the company’s brand to win support and admiration. It should be used to convert customer loyalty and vastly improve recruitment and retention of great employees.
However, the opposite often seems to be true. Fortunately at The Hepworth Wakefield we have seen some great exceptions to this with two sponsorship agreements over the past year that have clear mutual benefits for both the gallery and the company. Our partnerships with Philips auction house and Litestructures were both based on what we could do for the company and their business priorities, providing a unique platform for their expertise, creating projects together of great quality and developing a long term relationship.
However, corporate giving outside London has struggled and making corporate partnerships work takes a great deal of time and commitment. It will also take a number of years to grow corporate giving to match the significance of individual and trust and foundation giving in our fundraising portfolio, as well as to continue to persuade companies that this is a viable business proposition outside of London. We need more case studies such as Phillips and Litestructures to win further support.
In the meantime, arts and cultural organisations’ reliance on public funding and earned income will clearly continue. However, with an eye on long term investment in growth, I believe that this survey demonstrates that through individual support and in particular membership schemes, individuals can truly appreciate how every penny of their gift safeguards the organisation’s future, whilst they can enjoy the benefits of being involved. Members and Patrons can act as great ambassadors for us with a far greater reach and more credible voice than any advertising campaign can achieve.
Therefore, Government with the Arts Council should enable this slow growing but highly sustainable source of income through long term investment and training in membership which calls on both great fundraising and marketing skills. There is clearly a ‘tipping point’ when members stay as members for what they give to the organisation, rather than for what they get from it. Our ambition should be to retain their support until you can get them to this ‘tipping point’ when you can secure their loyalty for the long term.
Fundraising is a combination of great marketing, empathy and understanding a donor’s motivations to give, in order to build a relationship which will unlock the money. This survey clearly demonstrates that we are getting better at this with individual donors, which is very heartening. I am sure if we reviewed the context in which this has happened, we will note the improved training for arts and cultural fundraisers provided by Arts Fundraising and Philanthropy, or the importance of training now in leadership courses such as the Clore Fellowship programme.
However, how does this extend to the Board of an arts and cultural organisation – are we yet in a position to say every Trustee has given? Board active engagement and understanding of fundraising could clearly address the issue of capacity outlined in this survey. With the help of Trustees we could start to address the main issue holding back many organisations from achieving success – that of skilled resources.
Clearly the visual arts with its predominantly venue based activity also has an advantage in fundraising over those arts and cultural organisations running projects elsewhere. I am a Trustee of a wonderful charity The Reading Agency, which does incredible work inspiring more people to read and benefit from the difference that reading can make. However, it is predominantly trusts and foundations that understand and support this work nationwide, rather than individuals and corporate private investment.
So visual arts organisations should therefore celebrate their venues, make them work harder to communicate an understanding of the breadth of their work and the impact we all make to every visitor who walks through the doors.
The charitable message is essential and the definition of a charity after all is ‘for public benefit’. If we can develop these elements then I am sure that the trend in individual giving growth for the visual arts will continue.
