Ask for the money

As Geraint Talfan Davies laments the absence of a giving culture in the UK (AP170, p7), he follows countless Britons down the well-worn path of excuses for the state of philanthropy in this country, pulling a cart of misconceptions behind him. In its cargo are any number of reasons Britons are less philanthropic than Americans. A lack of tax incentives. A belief that increased donations will justify government spending cuts. That it’s simply “un-British.” While there’s truth in Davies’s statement that philanthropy is “planted deep in the American civic culture,” he keeps at arm’s length the main reason for the UK’s lack of a culture of giving – Britain’s continued reluctance to develop a culture of asking.

It should come as no surprise. The Department for Education and Skills addressed it in May 2004 in its report ‘Increasing voluntary giving to higher education: Task Force report to Government’, better known as the Thomas report. Although it focused on academia, the study’s findings should have reverberated not only throughout the arts and cultural world, but throughout Britain’s entire non-profit sector. Four years later, however, we’re still dealing with the same issues, making the same excuses. When Davies says that “changing the culture of giving is a task for the long haul,” the implication is that we won’t see change for some time, that no immediate change is possible. But that resignation, that we can’t do anything now, is the heart of our problem.

When Davies adds that “a handful of spectacular donations might well be accomplished quickly, but changing giving habits at a more modest level will take a lot longer, especially in parts of the country like Wales or the North East of England which have more limited corporate sectors, and thus much smaller pockets of wealth”, he sells short a wide swath of the UK, and he’s just plain wrong. If we are learning anything from our American colleagues, we should know that charitable giving as a percentage of income decreases as earning rises. That’s right: the wealthier you are, the less you give, and spectacular donations from the wealthy often lose their lustre when calculated as a percentage of income. And Davies makes a common mistake in assuming that a local corporate presence will drive philanthropy. If this were true we’d see a cluster of spectacular donations in every city with a premiership football club.

Geraint Talfan Davies’s biggest mistake, however, is his apparent assumption that philanthropy just happens, nudged by a government publicity drive. But no culture of giving (and certainly no culture of asking) will survive without fundraisers. Did the Watermill Theatre in Newbury automatically benefit from the culture of giving in West Berkshire, or did local donors accept the challenge set out by Watermill’s fundraising staff and volunteers? (Hint: Watermill Theatre received the 2007 ‘Fundraising Campaign of the Year’ award). Whether it’s in London, Edinburgh, Norwich, or even in Wales and the North East of England, successful arts fundraising is happening. It happens when we ask.

When donors in America are asked why they give, tax benefits, naming opportunities and the like are way down on the list. They give because they are asked to give. Our challenge, and I would implore Geraint Talfan Davies to join me, is to ask our donors to give, and to give at the greatest level they can. That’s a change we can make today.