Jeremy Hunt’s 10 point plan is well intentioned rhetoric at this point – the proposals are welcome but not yet sufficiently substantial to excite or galvanise. For example, the ambition to increase planned giving and to make the UK the nation that is most focused on legacy giving will be an empty one without a Treasury deal and tax law changes to stimulate it. Events, award schemes and other ‘awareness raising’ initiatives, to encourage business to support the arts, have been going on for three decades now. Bring on the cash incentives and particularly those that have worked in the past such as the Business Sponsorship Incentive Scheme of the 80s.

It is the commitment to practical action that is important now, but must we really have another review to inform the awaited Spring report? Surely we all know what is needed because, since Margaret Thatcher first insisted on it, the plural funding economy for the arts in the UK has been steadily developed and tested under each and every government that followed hers.

Removing hurdles – particularly those that restrict how arts organisations benefit and offer involvement and thanks to those who help them – and creating irresistible incentives are what government and only government can do, so a focus on that for both individuals and business will best back the current fine words.

However, the £80m is far too small a sum for the matched fund if it aims to include larger bodies who want to develop endowments and who are, by definition, already the most organised. The 15 or so big players throughout England surely have donors who could be readily incentivised to contribute substantially to endowments if they knew that their gift would be matched. The £80m will be consumed instantly.

If distribution is really on the political agenda, the brave thing might be to keep any matching grant scheme away from the major organisations and, instead, use it to develop and bring up those who are under resourced and currently under developed for philanthropy and business sponsorship. For these organisations, the incentive of matching has the power to make a big difference and Artes Mundi’s recent positive experience with the Big Give Garfield Weston Challenge in December is testament to that. Our small administrative team were all highly-motivated by the opportunity to match secured donations, pound for pound. We devised an online campaign to our mailing list and utilised online giving for the first time, learning a great deal and becoming more confident about both. We also raised £23k in less than three hours!

Greater recognition through the honours system is obviously also in the government’s gift and, to offer a credit where credit is due, can be a fine thing. But too much attention on this will let the government off with an action “after the event”, as it were, and also focuses on the very wealthy who make major gifts rather than on all potential philanthropists at every level. Getting the culture of giving anchored with all of us, must be the main goal.

Lucy Stout
Lucy Stout is a professional arts fundraiser with over 25 years direct experience, creating sustainable development operations to support artistic growth for a number of major arts organisations. She is currently head of development for Wales’ international contemporary arts initiative, Artes Mundi. Prior to this she was project director at ABSA (now Arts &Business) in the 80s and then helped to establish the National Theatre’s first Development Department, where she was director for 5 years. For 13 years she led the fundraising team as director of development for Welsh National Opera. In 2010, Stout was awarded the Hollis Award for an outstanding contribution to the sponsorship industry. She is also chair of Wales’ Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonia Cymru.

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