Joined up philanthropy

[Taylor Nuttall]

I'll keep this brief as I wanted to raise an opportunity to share ideas here rather than simply shout out one of my own.

I just watched the Cameron B'ham piece and began to wonder a bit more about the philanthropy opportunity.

1) Here for the first time in my experience of the arts we have a high level figurehead (champion?) telling people to think about how they might individually contribute to sustaining the high profile UK success that is the arts - to donate, volunteer, become a patron - whatever - putting my political inclinations aside this is an amazing opportunity - how can we maximise this exposure?

2) With the advent of e-technology based giving can we as a sector bring about a solution to more general people based philanthropy? Doing the sums of what the next spending review means to the everyday person a 25% cut imposed via ACE to its RFO's equates to around only 4p per person per week - or the cost of a cup of high street coffee per year, or a bit more than buying one weekend quality newspaper. Is there a way to motivate audiences nationally (not simply by just benefitting individual orgs) through something like the Big Art Give to achieve a joined up approach to philanthropy for the arts?

Just thinking......

[Patrick Hussey]

Well there are lots of models like Kickstarter in the States.

Let's blue sky an obvious answer. The simplest thing? An 'arts give' button like a FB 'Like' button that people put on their sites. When people click (on that site) they can easily give via PayPal or Buzzbank or whatever to that project. Would need sorting with the Banks but really not that hard surely.

Would it work? The tech is easy but would people go for it? Hmm yeah think so. In fact there is proba something out there like it. Anyone know of one?

[David Dixon]

I think there is an opportunity to increase public participation in funding the arts and I also think that is a very democratic approach. But having been involved in fundraising for the arts (and other things) for two decades I can say that nobody ever gives money to 'the arts' (what is that? who gets the money?). But they do give in very large numbers to 'their' theatre, gallery, youth dance company etc. In other words there has to be a concrete cause to which they have some kind of affiliation.

Fundraising via social media is good (I also run a social media company!) but the main thing is that each organisation has to be good at fundraising and assertive in asking from their own constituencies.