Government Cuts and Online Fundraising

[Alex Morrison]

Museums are facing a major challenge as their funding is cut by central government. 

The Government's position is set out in Ed Vaizey's speech to the Museums Association :-

"Everyone who works in museums will have to play their part in ensuring that their organisations thrive in the future. Our great museum collections are not the creation of Ministers, politicians, civil servants and Spending Reviews, but of private entrepreneurs and enlightened people with the vision and leadership to create great institutions up and down this country.

But driving forward will take courage and ingenuity. The state cannot afford to subsidise those who are unable to help themselves. All museums need to develop a stronger instinct for partnership, mergers, commercial ventures and new approaches. Those who fund museums and those who govern and lead them need to consider fresh strategies to ensure stability in the years to come."

He later continued on the same theme.

"I believe there is scope to develop further new ideas and at the same time to significantly increase the level of philanthropy and corporate sponsorship coming in to all our museums.

Efforts in these directions rarely result in quick wins, but require long term relationships, and everyone should see that as part of their role. Bright ideas are not the preserve of a few. We can all have one. There is no point having a talented fundraiser if the chief executives and trustees, or the governing body, do not play an active role in donor cultivation.

The Government wants to revitalise charitable giving in this country. The wider charitable sector is raising its game, and I’m sure the museums sector will continue to do so as well."

Government suggestions to call on rich philanthropists have been widely criticised as impractical and unsustainable.  But many people in the UK love their museums. 

Online community building and fundraising offer museums a chance to connect with those people and build a base of grass-roots support.  This may generate income directly and help them with their other fundraising efforts.  For UK cultural organisations today, it may be the most sustainable and long-sighted response to the present funding crisis. 

For more information about how this strategy might be put into effect see details of our recent event on the subject of Online Fundraising for Museums and Cultural Organisations at the ICA.

[Joanne South]

Online community building is certainly going to be key and a far more achievable form of philanthropy fundraising for most of the cultural sector. Online fundraising and crowdsource fundraising have the benefits of being able to deliver donor care in a personal and interactive way, build greater forms of engagement to encourage art supporters to donate and be able to turn supporters into advocates. Completely agree anyway Alex with your final statement.

In case you haven't seen these yet, a couple of documents that might be of interest which explores just this issue in more depth. One on how to fundraise online and another about philanthropy - the facts, trends and potential (hot off the press).

[Alex Morrison]

Thanks, Joanne. We are exactly on the same wavelength. Have just tweated a reference to your excellent report.

@Alex__Morrison

[Paddy Chatterton]

Hi Alex

Can you name me a successful online fundraising campaign by a UK arts/cultural organisation, that has raised a significant amount of money (min £10,000)? Would be great to get some examples of success stories

[Joanne South]

They are a bit thin on the ground really. Loads in other charitable sectors. I'm watching out for a few that are happening at the moment: Scottish National Portrait Gallery http://artsn.biz/bicDEn and the Big Arts Give on 6th Dec http://artsn.biz/9w47Wc

For actual examples of things that have already happened - I'd recommend searching the online giving platforms for arts projects: http://artsn.biz/d5YBug and of course http://www.kickstarter.com/



Paddy Chatterton said:

Hi Alex

Can you name me a successful online fundraising campaign by a UK arts/cultural organisation, that has raised a significant amount of money (min £10,000)? Would be great to get some examples of success stories

[Paddy Chatterton]

Hi Joanne

This is my concern, there is a lot of information, statistics e.t.c. about the potential of the internet/social media e.t.c to support arts/cultural organisations, but as of yet I haven't seen a successful example- am particularly looking for examples of success for medium sized arts organisations.

I actually ran an online campaign myself a few years back and made around £5,000. The campaign included an online video and link to justgiving. £5k was fine, but the people we reached...to be honest would have probably responded equally well to a letter!

The BIg Arts Give is worth looking at, although it is helped by a considerable match fund and includes a considerable offline element.

I love the idea of crowdfunding and online giving, but as a 1 person fundraiser I need to see evidence of it actually fulfilling its potential before investing time/resources into it. If anyone out there can tell us of success stories and why it worked, let's hear them!

[Joanne South]

The arts sector has been a bit slow at really harnessing the potential of this and part of that is evidence of its success (and issues around individual giving capability more generally). I think it needs to be thought of in the wider context of donor care, audience development, marketing etc for its real impact to be appreciated. As part of the funding mix it certainly helps. The online revolution has changed donors motivations and expectations which then impacts on offline fundraising too. The best way to learn though is by doing but it does need to be part of the individual giving campaigns orgs have already, and quite a few don't have these yet either.

Anything further you find - I'm very happy to promote on our website, so let me know.

[Alex Morrison]

Paddy Chatterton said:

Hi Alex

Can you name me a successful online fundraising campaign by a UK arts/cultural organisation, that has raised a significant amount of money (min £10,000)? Would be great to get some examples of success stories

Hi Paddy

There are case studies described in the slides from our presentation here :-

http://www.slideshare.net/Cogapp/museumsonlinefundraising-101006035...

best,

Alex

[Nick Sherrard]

This is a really interesting thread, and I wondered whether others shared my experience of this.

I really agree with Joanne that this needs to be looked at as part of a wider audience building and marketing agenda.

The slideshare Alex points to is a great statement of the opportunities of online fundraising but also hints at its limits i.e. there is huge potential for project-based fundraising through crowd-funding and online platforms, core funding is something else.

The danger just now is that people see kickstarter and the like as a silver bullet to the issues of funding cuts when the challenge of securing core funding is still all about the fundraising craft of understanding your donors and interacting with them in ways they value whether on or offline. At the moment the impact of online activity is actually quite limited in this regard.

So it seems to me arts organisations should be looking to online campaigns around new project ideas, and enabling some innovative projects in austere times, whilst for core organisational funding the web is just one of the supporting tools. Is that other people's experience too?

[Joanne South]

Exactly what I've found too. Project based campaigns make a compelling ask and plays on the real time feature of many social networks.

I don't think anyone has really tried with core funding yet through online platforms. I suppose the trick though is to apply best practice revenue fundraising to the online medium (i.e. clear about where the money will go/be used for, why they should give, make it tangible where possible, actually make a direct ask rather than imply it etc).

[Paddy Chatterton]

And how much real life engagement does an online donor need? That's another question to ponder. Can someone be motivated to donate to a project through online engagement solely or do they need to have seen your work, know your organisation in person? I think that successful fundraising really is about interacting with you audiences offline and that the online tools help to keep that interaction going, but are not the actual incentive to give. They have a definite use in this process, but to my mind are secondary and not as powerful as face to face interaction. I think this is particularly true of the arts, where a donor responds because of the love of that particular organisation's work, as opposed to other more emotive charities where the donor is responding to the charity's cause. People's responses to arts are experiential, so it logically concludes they need to have experienced the work of the arts organisation. So with this in mind the potential of online giving is still limited to your offline audiences and therefore still limited by the numbers of your audiences..

[Alex Morrison]

I don't think anyone sensible would claim that online engagement is a substitute for real-world activity. It's just the best and cheapest way of capturing and enriching the relationship that exists between an arts organisation and its supporters. Once captured in this way, the relationship can be developed in various ways including (but not limited to) provision of financial support. As Joanne says above, these are early days for arts organisations and we all need to find out what can be done with these tools when they are creatively applied. In the meanwhile, there are very good signs to suggest it will be very productive.

BTW one data item that shocked me (in a good way) while doing the research for our presentation was the size of JustGiving - this is a UK only organisation and it has 12 million personal accounts. That's 24% of the UK adult population (and presumably a much larger percentage of the audience base for most arts organisations). More details at slide 11-16 in our presentation below.

http://www.slideshare.net/Cogapp/museumsonlinefundraising-101006035...

[Nick Sherrard]

Sure - I think my hesitation here is that this thread was framed around online fundraising as a way of dealing with core funding cuts. If organisations fit it into their development plans that way I think they'll be disappointed.

On the flipside if they build it in as a way of funding individual projects then a huge opportunity will open up - actually not just in terms of access to funds but in the broader cause of opening cultural organisations up to their audiences too.

And with that in mind then yep - that is a really exciting stat!