Push to increase private funding

A ‘matching funding challenge’ scheme, tax reforms and campaigns to increase legacies and cultural philanthropy are among five priority recommendations made by Arts & Business (A&B) in a new Private Sector Policy for the Arts. The policy, which has been issued as a consultation document to coincide with the General Election, also expresses the aim of enabling the arts collectively to raise £1bn from private sources by 2016. Additionally, A&B is calling for Lottery funding to re-establish the A&B Matching Grant Scheme in England, which it cut following the reduction of its Arts Council England grant from £6m to £4m in the 2007 funding review. A&B is also planning to work with the philanthropist Alec Reed on a matching funding challenge for the arts. This scheme will involve 50–100 arts organisations chosen by A&B through an application process. They will be required to create their own fund and challenge the public to match it through Reed’s website, the Big Give, during a period of a week in December 2010. Once this fund has been matched, any further public donations will be matched by A&B, which has set aside £500,000 for the purpose. Previous such campaigns have raised between £2m and £8m for participating charities, with the incentive of matched funding stimulating the public to give around 60% more than otherwise.
A&B is also campaigning for arts organisations to be more active in claiming Gift Aid. It estimates that around £5m remains unclaimed by the sector, and says that although 87% of large arts organisations claim the benefit, only 12% of small organisations do so. A&B has brought together tax experts from major UK firms to drive this and other tax ideas forward. It supports the use of Lottery funds for starting up endowments, and wants 75% of its arts members which receive private income to create a legacy programme within the coming 18 months. It will also create a partnership with the Community Foundation Network on behalf of smaller arts organisations “to promote regional arts endowments for smaller arts projects, and help them to extend their limited number of county-based arts endowment funds”.
A final version of the policy will be presented to the public and to the new UK government in July. Responses to the consultation document should be sent to A&B by 28 May.

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