New figures suggest heavy reliance on volunteers and public subsidy
Arts Council England’s (ACE) regularly funded organisations (RFOs) “are increasingly turning to volunteer staff rather than paid staff”, according to the latest figures published in ACE’s annual round-up of data on its revenue-funded clients. Over 35,000 volunteers (63% of whom were female) gave their time to support the work of England’s RFOs in 2009/10 – a 30% increase from the previous year. Over the same time period, numbers of permanent and contractual staff employed in these organisations grew by only 3%.
The largest source of revenues for RFOs was earned income (44%), including ticket sales, workshop fees, merchandising and membership fees, together with revenues from supplementary activity such as catering. The second most valuable source of income was ACE grants, which contributed an average of 33% of turnover: 15% of that money comes from the Lottery or Grants for the Arts scheme. The dance sector is the most reliant on ACE funding, with 42% of dance organisations’ income coming from ACE subsidy. RFOs received a further 7% of their income from local authorities, and subsidy from other public bodies accounted for 4% of revenues. Contributed income, which includes sponsorship, trusts and donations, brought in 9%. However, contributed income across the RFO portfolio has decreased over the past three financial years: income from trusts has fallen by 13% since 2007/08, and income from donations by 10% over the same time period.
In 2009/10, 90% of RFOs offered an education programme as part of their funded activity. Although this number has remained relatively constant, the number of artists involved in education work has decreased by 17%, from 34,000 in 2007/08 to 28,000 in 2009/10.
As reported last year (AP217), ACE requires all of its RFOs to complete an equality assessment. However, the 2008/09 data showed that Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff made up just 11% of RFOs’ staff. This year’s figures show a nominal rise, with BAME employees making up 12% of total permanent staff numbers. The number for contractual staff rose from 21% in 2008/09 to 22% this year. In 2009/10, 2% of the RFOs’ total permanent and contractual staff were reported as being disabled. Between 2008/09 and 2009/10 there was an increase of 17% in the number of disabled staff, however, the proportion of disabled staff remained constant.
The figures are used “to inform [ACE’s] policies, aims and ambitions”, and will doubtless feed into discussions and decisions around the new national portfolio organisations (NPOs), which will be announced at the end of March. ACE shared approximately £342m between 836 RFOs in 2009/10, and the published findings are based on a 99% response rate.