Catalyst Arts awards delayed by six weeks

Catalyst Arts awards delayed by six weeks

News

The first grant awards from the government’s Catalyst Arts £55m endowment building scheme and £30m capacity building and matched funding scheme, launched in June 2011 to boost private giving to the arts,  have been delayed by six weeks till May.

The bodies responsible for administering these schemes, Arts Council England (ACE) and Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) have advised applicants that owing to a greater than anticipated number of applications - over 350 compared to its estimate of 180 -  it will be extending the time taken to assess, review and moderate them.
 
In addition, ACE and HLF are restricted by Cabinet Office guidelines on making public announcements in the weeks approaching local government and Mayoral elections further compounding the postponement of award notification. This year, elections will be held on 3 May 2012 and communication activity is affected from mid-April.
 
As a result, successful applicants will start their Catalyst activity from the date of the funding agreement, not from 1 April 2012.  The third and final phase of Catalyst applications – to support organisations develop their fundraising capacities over one year will open for applications as announced in March and is unaffected by these development.

John Nicholls, managing partner of Arts Quarter LLP, which is currently surveying the arts sector on how it is progressing in engaging more effectively with philanthropists and looking at perceptions within the sector of government initiatives to promote greater levels of giving to the arts, has raised a number of concerns about the Catalyst scheme.

He says feedback from applicants so far has identified potential ‘bottlenecks’ with too many organisations chasing too little private sector funding, and more fundraising jobs being created than there are skilled people to fill them.

Nicholls also says that the decision to exclude corporate sponsorship from the eligibility to qualify under the matched funding scheme is a huge missed opportunity to galvanise higher levels of giving by business to the arts: “Understandably as a result, organisations are not focusing their fundraising efforts on corporate funding as it will not be matched and this is a huge oversight.

Nicholls agrees however that Catalyst remains possibly the greatest opportunity for arts organisations to make a fundamental step change in their capacities to engage with philanthropists more proactively and expand levels of giving to the arts more widely.  The challenge will come for organisations at the end of Catalyst to maintain the level of revenue fundraising growth with the loss of the matched funding element of the programme in 2015.

We’ve supported a number of organisations through the Catalyst bid process and helping them to create viable and sustainable revenue fundraising models that will continue to thrive independently of matched funding has been a key challenge."

However, he said that the Arts Council is potentially caught between a “rock and a hard place” in deciding who to fund under Catalyst and at what level.  “They will be criticised whether they give a number of larger grants to fewer organisations or spread funding more thinly and award a greater number of smaller grants. Either way they will be accused of not using the money effectively.”  

Nicholls says where Catalyst has succeeded already is in focusing organisations on how they will continue to deliver great art for everyone.

Organisations have had to ask fundamental and difficult questions about who and what they are and in some cases these questions are being asked at boardroom level for the first time. There has been a step change in understanding of fundraising strategic thinking as a result of the Catalyst process. It has started to force boards to consider their roles, whether they are ‘giving boards’ for example, and even admit if they do not understand what is needed to attract more private sector funding to their organisations. The scheme is aptly called Catalyst because it really has changed how the sector thinks about itself and how it needs to act  in terms of engaging more effectively with philanthropy.

Nicholls feels the real measure of the success of Catalyst will be how quickly the shortfall in funding to the arts from national and local government through funding cuts is recovered via additional support generated from the private sector.  The shortfall is estimated by some to be in the order of £40m.

But he says it is likely to be a “long haul” as it will rely on a number of factors including for fundraising to become more professionalised, and that may require formal training and mentoring schemes to be created and for the industry to mature as it has in the US and Canada.

The Arts Quarter survey is now live and will close on March 15th with results scheduled to publish March 29th.

Arts organisation can take part by going to the Arts Quarter website.