Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy transforms the fundraising knowledge, skills and levels of success of arts organisations.
Working with Trustees, CEOs, senior leaders, mid-career and new and emerging talent, we empower cultural professionals to harness the considerable opportunities that fundraising offers and to develop diverse and entrepreneurial practice, building and growing a skilled fundraising workforce.
We achieve this through the following strands of delivery:
- Ideas and innovation - developing new ideas and practical solutions to support organisations to achieve their fundraising potential;
- Strategy and fundraising leadership - stimulating new sources of private income and cultivating commercial opportunities as part of impactful business planning;
- Training and lifelong learning - creating and sharing ideas for innovative practice via face to face, online and accredited training and learning.
Cause4 leads Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy with consortium partners the Arts Marketing Association (AMA) and the University of Leeds (UoL). Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation (NPO) and Sector Support Organisation (SSO) from April 2018 – 2023.
Impact
Over the past seven years, the Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy (AFP) programme has:
- Delivered over 300 training courses
- Funded over 80 Fellowships, supporting new talent into the sector, and in turn raising millions of pounds for arts and cultural organisations
- Launched a digital learning programme reaching 12,000 people
- Commissioned and published over 100 dedicated case studies, and launched a benchmarking dashboard for income in the arts and cultural sector
In 2019/20, the Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy programme:
- Delivered 65 AFP training courses, reaching more than 930 people nationwide.
- Secured funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to work with 150 heritage organisations on business strategy and development
- Supported seven organisations for a year through the Fundraising Culture Change programme
- Led a national philanthropy conference in partnership with Arts Council England on stimulating new ideas into philanthropy
- Recruited a diverse cohort of 10 entry-level fundraisers onto a new Fellowship programme
Some examples of the organisations we have supported include:
Impact
Case Study
Whitstable Biennale is a festival of performance, film and sound, taking place every two years on the Kent coast.
The charity joined our Culture Change Programme to gain a vision of what the organisation might look like in the future and to plan how best to maintain financial viability longer term.
The programme supported the creation of a fundraising plan which explored key areas of development through workshops with staff and Trustees, with a key focus on generating corporate support for the festival. Through the development of a practical toolkit, the team was able to move forwards quickly and have been able to host events for associated brands, developing the number of businesses engaging with the festival.
“Culture Change was strategic but also practical. We had open discussions and moved forwards a culture of fundraising within the organisation”.
Catherine Herbert, Deputy Director of the Biennale.