Image: Ersu via Flickr
At the recent ArtsHub Conference Anna Draffin explored the changing face of philanthropy. In this second excerpt from her speech, she explains how arts organisations can make the most of this changed environment.
The big thing is to embed the commitment for philanthropy at all levels across your culture. Think like social media. Be genuine and transparent and be constant but not too constant. Funders are ultimately time-poor, as we all are, so they like to be kept informed, but not overly informed.
Establish where your organisation currently sits on the spectrum of giving. At one end we have charitable giving – traditional giving where you apply for a grant, the grant is made, you go away and spend it and you quit the grant. At the other end you have impact investing. In the middle you have the big rise of social enterprises. A lot of arts organisations over the last five years have embraced this growing trend and made an aspect of business into a little-spin off social enterprise. Indeed some have moved to becoming based as social enterprise models.
Because you’re dealing with living donors, they become focussed on making the best impact they can as part of their legacy and wanting to see that immediate effect during their lifetime, so as a result, funders, like government agencies, are becoming increasingly interested in assessing impact and actually understanding the impact of their funding, how that improves society. They want to understand what your objectives are and how they are going to create social impact.
Be upfront in the early discussions you have with funders about what type of impact you’re going to assess, and to think laterally and creatively. This isn’t necessarily about, your artistic outputs and outcomes. You may have a societal impact into disadvantaged communities, it might be education-based, it might be linguistically-based. Think about how you are actually driving other types of impact alongside the outputs that you may have.
Creating a portfolio of different types of giving is absolutely essential. I would urge you not to forget the traditional trusts and foundations. People often become a little bit complacent about some of those trusts and foundations because they’ve been around for a long time and, a bit like our government agencies, where you’ve been working with them and been successful with your, with you grant applications for some years. Sometimes you sort of forget that, that they too have staff and representatives and trustees that feel deeply engaged and embedded in your organisations. Make sure you’re keeping them as close as your living donors.
