Last week, the Federal Government’s recently established Parliamentary Inquiry into Arts and Cultural Philanthropy held its first significant hearing.
Four executive staff from Creative Australia – including CEO Adrian Collette – appeared before the 11-member standing committee, chaired by Labor Member Susan Templeman MP, to offer advice on how the arts can increase its levels of philanthropic giving and private donor support in coming years.
But after the 45-minute session – which included statements from Creative Australia and questions from the committee on recent arts sector challenges – many were left wondering whether it revealed anything new about the direction of the Federal Government’s arts funding policy and its approach to philanthropic giving.
Arts & Philanthropy Inquiry – quick links:
Submissions reveal the sector’s priorities
Of the 94 submissions made to the Inquiry in February and March, there were some compelling and clear-eyed recommendations for philanthropic arts policy from a diverse spread of sector representatives.
Recommendations were made by major national cultural institutions such as the National Gallery of Australia, The Australian Ballet and the National Library of Australia, as well as medium-sized and state-based organisations like Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
Numerous sector peak bodies also made submissions, including Live Performance Australia, Australian Museums and Galleries Association and NAVA.
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Calling from the big end of town, The Australian Ballet’s submission spoke to the specific fundraising challenges that major performing arts organisations are now facing, and the company’s Executive Director, Claire Spencer AM, made three direct recommendations.
Spencer argued that charitable donations made to arts DGR organisations (those with deductible gift recipient status) should become a 150% tax deduction, as opposed to the current 100% deduction. Further, she saw room to extend the Federal Government’s Fringe Benefits Tax exemption, currently applied to Public Benevolent Institutions, to include not-for-profit arts organisations too.
Spencer also believes that amending the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act to allow bequests to be made from superannuation accounts (also removing the 17% super death tax) would make a huge difference to donations to large cultural organisations like The Australian Ballet.
Coming from the small-to-medium end of the sector, there were pertinent recommendations from organisations like Western Sydney Arts Alliance and Sydney’s Belvoir St Theatre.
Western Sydney Arts Alliance’s submission astutely pointed to the very real fundraising ‘readiness gaps’ that small-to-medium arts organisations have, which limits their ability to compete for, and benefit from, many highly effective ‘matched’ government funding schemes.
Meanwhile, Belvoir St Theatre’s submission urged the Federal Government to consider aligning Creative Australia’s recently launched National Arts Giving Day initiative, the AusArt Day, more closely with the UK’s Big Give model, to allow arts organisations to receive matched funding support for every dollar raised from philanthropic foundations and corporates during a set period of time.
After dipping into just a handful of the almost 100 submissions, it’s plain to see there are both diverse needs and various consensus issues (and recommendations to fix them) on the minds of arts CEOs and executive directors right now.
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Consensus issues neglected at March hearing
Unfortunately, much of last week’s hearing was spent on a broad brushstroke discussion of arts philanthropy, lacking reference to many of the priority concerns raised in these sector submissions.
While many submissions strongly endorsed the idea of a greater government focus on matched public/ private funding schemes as a way to boost philanthropic arts revenue, this topic was not interrogated during the hearing beyond a brief mention by Creative Australia’s CEO in his opening statement. Here, Colette stated Creative Australia was actively ‘building donor relationships and delivering sophisticated fundraising campaigns … [and] participating in matched-funding initiatives and national giving days … in a challenging environment’.
Collette signaled that Creative Australia’s matched funding initiatives have recently enjoyed ‘strong growth’. Its Australian Cultural Fund platform, he said, saw a 46% year-on-year increase in donations in 2024-25.
But rather than delve deeper into how more strategic matched funding schemes could help ameliorate the sector’s current philanthropy gaps, the standing committee’s questions to Creative Australia’s staff were more concerned with establishing whether there are any areas of the arts that should not be dependent on philanthropy, and whether there has been any noticeable challenges to philanthropy because of recent events that have challenged Australia’s sense of social cohesion.
While these are valid questions, they lacked resonance with many key points raised in sector submission papers.
The ‘chicken-and-egg’ dilemma of government and philanthropic funding
Many submissions emphasised a need for nuanced tax reform measures and called for resources to expand matched funding schemes to help supercharge philanthropic arts giving in Australia.
Importantly, smaller arts organisations also expressed concern around the increasing precarity of government funding, and the pressure to fill those funding gaps with philanthropic support.
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In its submission, the independent Melbourne organisation La Mama Theatre argued that ‘without stable operational support, organisations are compelled into continual project-based fundraising cycles, reducing efficiency and increasing administrative burden [which] diminishes sector productivity’.
Its submission continued: ‘If arts philanthropy is to expand effectively, policy settings should explicitly incentivise multi-year and unrestricted operational giving.’
La Mama’s point strikes at an issue being raised by many independents and small-to-medium organisations: that reductions in their core operational government funding – or a complete loss of operational funding, as has recently been the case for some State Government-funded organisations in Victoria – is encouraging a scarcity mindset, and increasing the administrative pressures on already stretched-thin teams, which must then cobble together piecemeal grants, donations and other income to try to keep their companies afloat.
This unsustainable system is leading smaller arts companies and collectives to breaking point (if they have not broken already).
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Another related point is that, regardless of an arts organisation’s size, many major donors are often keen to offer their financial support, but will only do so when those entities have already secured reasonable levels of government funding to assure them that their own investment is going to safe hands.
As one not-for-profit arts organisation recently told ArtsHub, while they came extremely close to securing a ‘game-changing’ donation from a new donor, that deal fell through when the donor realised their donation amount was not commensurate with the level of government support for the organisation.
Where to next for the Parliamentary Inquiry into Arts and Cultural Philanthropy?
If there is any simple takeaway from this first major hearing on this complex area of Australia’s arts ecosystem, it is perhaps that Australian arts companies, organisations, not-for-profits and artists fundamentally require stable and secure government funding first, before (relatively) stable and secure philanthropic support can follow.
As Adrian Collette said himself at the hearing, ‘[Creative Australia] will continue with [its] in-principle commitment to the freedom of creative expression’. Indeed, one would hope that in a stable democratic country like Australia, its government institutions – as opposed to its private donors and corporations – are still the most dependable bastions of creative freedoms for artists.
What’s also patently obvious is that the advice of our experienced arts sector CEOs and Executive Directors, many of whom who have already made well-reasoned recommendations to this Parliamentary Inquiry, is worth paying close attention to.
