Annette Welkamp, Director, Cultural Connotations
Last week in Paris (what an opening line!),
I visited the Musée de la Mode et du Textile (Museum of
Fashion and Textiles) and saw a wonderful exhibition entitled
Light and Dark. After a couple of enjoyable hours of longing and
learning, I noticed a total absence of the logos and sponsorship
messages so commonly found in museums nowadays. My companion,
a Dutch museum curator, remarked coolly that this museum didn’t
need such support since the French Ministry of Culture simply
bankrolled the lot. What a luxury, I thought, not having to solicit
sponsors and patrons for every show that your museum staged.
However this can also mean missed opportunities
for engaging committed and enthusiastic supporters, as fundraising
is not only the pursuit of the almighty dollar — undertaken
effectively it is also a very specific and effective form of audience
development. Potential major donors and sponsors are frequently,
although not always, drawn from the movers and shakers in the
community in which a museum operates. These people to whom you
make your sales pitches might not always contribute to your current
campaign, but access at such moments provides unique opportunities
to sow seeds for future support, financial or otherwise, with
people of influence.
There are many vehicles available to museums
for raising money. In addition to applications to government and
undertaking commercial operations, the sources for financial support
can be broadly defined into three categories: foundations and
trusts, corporates and private individuals. The distinctions between
them though are often blurred, especially where corporate leaders
influence their company’s patronage as well as being philanthropic
in their own right.
All our museums have, or should have, a mission
statement, which defines our goals and objectives on both a daily
basis as well as for the longer term. Raising funds of course
directly enables museums to fulfil these, but the way in which
fundraising is undertaken can also facilitate achieving these
goals. A contemporary art museum, for example, might raise just
as much money by staging a chook raffle in every pub in town as
it could by introducing a friends scheme, but the latter also
enables it to garner supporters interested in its programmes while
simultaneously being an ongoing source of income. The key to successful
fundraising then is integrating the objectives of the fundraising
activities and those of the museum.
In an effort to achieve maximum benefits from
a fundraising campaign over both the short and longer terms, it
is appropriate to step back first and identify the goals of the
campaign. These might include: attracting enough resources to
ensure that over the longer term the museum’s growth is secured;
increasing community awareness of the needs of your organisation;
encouraging more people and organisations to become actively involved
in your objectives; ensuring that it is financially stable over
the longer term; and undertaking fundraising in a cost-effective
manner. Unfortunately, it is usually not possible to achieve all
of these simultaneously. For example often the campaign incurring
the least cost per dollar is one that secures a few, very large
donations from private individuals. This is unlikely, however,
to influence the many potential smaller donors who might contribute
$100 or less and upon whom you might also be dependent. Similarly,
a direct mail campaign might raise the greatest awareness of your
programmes, but can be extremely expensive to undertake.
For most museums, each year’s budget
appears to be larger than that of the previous year. Usually this
increase is the result of delivering expanded programmes and services
designed both to please the current audience and to pull in new
sectors of the community. If a this kind of growth is to be sustainable,
the organisation must then continue to expand the base of smaller
donors from which it is able to obtain financial, and other support.
Direct mail campaigns requesting small amounts of money to either
existing supporters, ie. friends groups, or the broader community
is a typical tactic to increase the donor base, and may be repeated
annually with success. The cause to be supported must generally
have broad appeal with clear outcomes in order to be successful.
But it can be a costly exercise both in terms of undertaking the
campaign itself, as well as in ensuring adequate service to the
increased numbers of donors acquired.
Fundraising tactics can also facilitate raising
awareness of a museum’s existence. This is particularly important
for new organisations or for those wishing to alter their profile
in the public arena. The staging of exclusive gala events, for
example, can generate donations as well as increase the visibility
of a museum amongst potential larger donors. Similarly, media
stunts and popular events can enhance the broader community’s
awareness, often by their ability to generate media coverage.
An example of a particularly successful tactic from the health
sector is Red Nose Day developed in aid of research into Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome. However, this campaign’s decreasing
popularity attests to the limited life that such tactics seem
to have. Something else to note is that many corporate sponsorships
and donations can increase awareness further via their own promotional
channels.
Museums are traditionally very good at encouraging
members of the community to be actively involved in their organisation,
ranging from meeting-and-greeting at the front desk to governance
at board level. These supporters are often the first to be called
upon for financial contributions because they rarely require much
convincing of the merit of the cause. Appropriate servicing, again,
is foremost in maintaining the strength of this support. Newsletters,
briefings, tours and personal contact all help to build effective
relationships, which in many instances will lead to increased
donations over time from individuals and corporations. Informed,
engaged and involved donors, and in particular volunteers, are
more likely to give more and do so more frequently.
Unfortunately for most museums, and charitable
organisations in general, the financial horizon is viewed as being
remarkably close. Budgets are often managed to balance in the
short term, usually the financial year or at most a three to five
year term. Our institutions on the other hand are philosophically
rooted in the concept that they will always be around. Greater
financial stability in the long term will be achieved by periodically
reviewing fundraising strategies and modifying them to account
for a changing world. The current uncertainty in the business
sector after the troubles of September 11, for example, might
require a decreasing reliance on large individual donations from
private individuals for the time being. Tactics that were in place
before are likely to be less effective now. Additionally, it is
important to recognise that much as a diversified share portfolio
ensures greater stability in one’s own personal finances,
a diversified fundraising programme enables a museum to be less
dependent upon individual sources of income, and therefore less
affected by changes in these levels that are beyond their control.
Museums concerned with their longer-term stability will be looking
towards establishing and maintaining foundations and planned giving
programmes if they have not already done so.
Finally, fund-raising must be cost-effective,
although the measurement of this will change over the life of
a campaign. For any campaign it should be possible to identify
the various costs per dollar raised and this should be used as
a guide to evaluate the effectiveness of any given tactic. The
costs associated with maintaining a friends group, procuring a
major benefactor, or staging a fund-raising event should be measured
against their net return, which will affect the museum’s
decision to continue or change its current fund-raising course.
Some tactics, such as establishing a supporter’s group (membership
forms, cards, newsletters, databases etc.), require substantial
start-up investment to instigate, whilst others such as acquiring
a few major donors might not. Given the many other possible outcomes
associated with fundraising strategies, the economics of an individual
campaign though should be measured against the other possible
outcomes such as those referred to above.
Museums should identify their ideal fundraising
strategies in accordance with their overall mission. Through the
accidents of history, the involvement of various individuals and
the changing political, economic and social climates in which
they operate each museum will have developed an individual mission
statement setting it apart from every other in the country. The
logical outcome then is that the fundraising strategies and tactics
chosen will be individually tailored to a museum’s needs
in order for it to be efficient, effective and successful.
Annette is currently engaged with Heide
Museum of Modern Art as Campaign Manager for the Heide Building
Fund