Spotlight - Giving and investing

In a special investigation, Paul Glinkowski profiles the world of trusts and foundations.

What?s the biggest prize for the visual arts in the UK? ?Surely it?s the Turner Prize?, I hear you say. Well, judged by media coverage and public awareness that must certainly be the case. But, considered from the point of view of direct financial reward, prizes and awards offered by independent trusts and foundations, such as the Jerwood Charity and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, put more actual cash at the disposal of artists. The winner of this year?s Jerwood Applied Arts Prize, for example, will pick up a cool £30,000, compared with the £25,000 offered by the Turner. The 2005 Paul Hamlyn Awards For Artists stretch even further, offering £30,000 each year for three years to not just one, but five artists.

Philanthropy

This example illustrates the generally understated but vital role that independent grant-giving trusts and foundations play today within the overall economy of the arts. Whereas the perennial controversy stirred up by the Turner Prize translates into healthy box office for the Tate, foundations are happy to conduct their business in a lower key. ?We would like a moderate amount of dignified coverage for what we do,? says Robert Dufton, Director of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, ?but we prefer to shy away from controversy.?

According to the most recent (soon to be updated) data compiled by Arts & Business (A&B), total giving to the arts from trusts and foundations was estimated in 2003 to be £52.8m. Grossed up to include other forms of individual giving, such as friends schemes, and legacies and bequests, philanthropic awards and donations contribute over a quarter of a billion a year to the arts in the UK. This equates to 3.6% of total UK philanthropic expenditure. In the US, the percentage is 5.7%. If the UK were to attain the US percentage level the arts would benefit by an extra £142m. Recognising this, A&B has set up the Maecenas Initiative ? named after the celebrated Roman philanthropist Gaius Maecenas ? to try to foster a more fertile climate for giving to the arts.

Philip Spedding, who runs the Maecenas Initiative, believes that the secret to success, particularly where individual donors are concerned, is ?finding out what people want and feeding it?. Donor care in the UK is, according to Spedding, nowhere near as sophisticated as in the US. ?If you keep the donor involved?, he says, ?they will keep opening their wallet.? Another key lesson the arts here could learn from US is to develop a culture where well-off Board members are encouraged to donate money as well as their expertise. ?It is crucial,? says Spedding, ?that peer-to-peer selling is set by example. Those who ?do the ask? must also have given.?

Beyond policy

Trusts and foundations, as well as individual donors, develop their own criteria for what they choose to support. Unlike public funding agencies, trusts are free to distribute their resources without having to worry about how their investment might contribute to policy agendas extraneous to the arts, such as education or social inclusion. Whilst Arts Council England (ACE) frets over the perceived assault by the Labour government on the ?arm?s-length principle? (what ACE Chair, Sir Christopher Frayling, describes as ?an erosion of artistic independence? the danger of playing politics with the arts?), trusts and foundations can, if they choose, keep their funding focused on purely artistic outcomes.

But, is this happening? Anecdotal evidence from some of the leading players in the independent sector suggests that it might be. ?One of big joys of being independent? says Shreela Ghosh, Arts & Heritage Programme Director at the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, ?is that we?re not looking for outputs. I won?t give our Trustees a cost?benefit ratio on what we support. We say in our mission statement that we want to fund things that are hard to fund, and that?s what we try to do. If we fund an artists? residency that only supports two people and is entirely process orientated, then fine, that?s the way it should be.? Ghosh?s philosophy ? that in the current political climate it is important for independent trusts to support art for art?s sake ? is echoed by Sian Edes, who runs the Arts Programme at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. ?Arts for social engineering makes me feel quite contrary,? she says, ?We did masses and masses on community arts in our history, but you can go too far in that direction.?

Risky business

The Gulbenkian?s current focus is on encouraging risk, particularly through support for research and development. ?We?d be disappointed if research and development funding doesn?t eventually lead to a commission,? says Ede, ?but even if a project doesn?t come off, the research can never be wasted ? it?s sure to benefit either the artist or the organisation?.

While some foundations are choosing to invest in risk, others are more concerned to promote and foster sustainability in the arts ? particularly at a time when funding from government is at a standstill. Two current initiatives show how independent foundations are taking a strategic lead in skilling-up arts managers to face the challenges of the 21st century. The Clore Leadership Programme is making an unprecedented investment in what it hopes will be our next generation of top arts managers. The Clore Fellows are stakeholders in a parallel initiative, ?Mission, Money and Models?, developed by the Jerwood Charity in partnership with A&B. It is about to launch a two-year programme of action research to help create a more solid platform of organisational and financial stability within arts companies. ?It will be based on a combination of funding and of finding new practice and next practice, in both the UK and abroad,? says Jerwood Charity Director Roanne Dods.

Initiatives such as these are, perhaps, where trusts and foundations can be most effective: using their resources, their expertise and their influence not simply to respond to requests for funding but proactively to seek new solutions to deeper structural issues. According to Helmut Anheier and Diana Leat ? co-authors of ?From charity to creativity?(1), one of few recent books to analyse contemporary philanthropy ? the key challenge for foundations in the 21st century is to provide a space for alternative thinking and practices. ?In a society in which government and business increasingly resemble each other and are driven by short term, often spurious, performance measures,? they argue, ?foundations have a unique role to play in questioning the conventional wisdoms, making new connections, thinking and working ?outside the box?.?

Paul Glinkowski is the Rootstein Hopkins Research Fellow at Wimbledon School of Art. He is researching the impact of the investment made, since 1995, by the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation in support of the visual arts in the UK. e: pglinkowski@wimbledon.ac.uk