Leading fundraising professional Eva Woloshyn offers her perspective on the issue of intelligent funding.
Fundraisers look for intelligent solutions to the funding challenges facing their organisations. For many, this means filling in the gaps in the revenue budget with opportunistic funding applications. The larger, more robust organisations plan ahead for the role that fundraised income can realistically be expected to play in the overall business model supporting the artistic vision. Smaller organisations often struggle to invest sufficient resource and know-how into the task. But most not for profit arts organisations are a red ink business. The standard funding profile for an arts organisation is a patchwork of public and private funding sources which, together with other income, services a financial profile brushing the edge of bankruptcy.
So it is hard to imagine that the arts could dispense with public support via grants and private philanthropy. Left to the market, organisations would need to invest more heavily in the brand and become artistically risk averse. They would inevitably develop aggressive competitive tactics within their own sector, which would militate against a rich and diverse cultural ecology. For the moment then, for better or for worse, the business models of most arts organisations need fundraised income to survive. Intelligent fundraising builds sustainable partnerships from a diversity of sources. Ideally the combined characteristics and strengths of these partnerships create a funding environment that supports excellence and innovation, and builds institutional capacity for the future.
What do intelligent funding partners bring to the mix? Public funding agencies make their best contribution when they offer enough cash to leverage support from other sources, and they invest both money and skills in a stabilising process. However, to benefit from major public investment, an organisation has to be sufficiently robust in its governance and resources to be able to manage organisational change and high levels of public accountability. Some of the most impressive examples of business partnership involve a combination of cash and expertise in press and marketing, for example, or in-kind support.
Good partnerships involve mutual respect and a commitment to a sustained relationship. The most effective individual philanthropists are those passionate, generous individuals who make relatively uncomplicated demands. They take pleasure from participating in success and in helping to build a platform that supports community participation. In the best examples, mutual trust and loyalty are developed over the long-term. The most sophisticated charitable trusts are prepared to bridge the most intractable funding gaps. They offer a light touch because they understand the arts environment, recognise good practice, and are content to act as enablers.
The common ingredient between all funding partners and arts organisations is the desire to invest in success, howsoever that may be separately defined. The question remains, though: what should an arts organisation be asking of their intelligent funders? First of all, a healthy cultural sector needs to base development on sustainable funding streams from partners willing to invest over a significant period. Mature relationships create an informed funding market. Arts organisations want to offer themselves to funders as robust and confident partners. An under-resourced organisation is vulnerable to exploitation from both internal and external stakeholders.
Intelligent funders recognise the need to build investment for the future into the funding package. Innovative funding invests in skills, people, new technology and research. Intelligent funders will be prepared to contribute to a big vision that involves working with a diversity of partners. It is likely that arts organisations will progressively need to invest in strategic partnerships within the sector, across artforms and with business.
Perhaps the arts, business, individual philanthropists and the independent and public sectors have more points of common interest than can be easily identified from our individual silos. There is certainly a wealth of intelligent debate about the future of funding. For better or for worse, it would at least be revealing for private and public funders to pilot some new models for collaboration, governance, innovation and participation.
Eva Woloshyn is Director of Development and Corporate Affairs at Trinity Laban.