Ethical debate: Sponsorship
To sustain relevant and innovative programming in a competitive funding climate, museums are using commercial sponsorship to boost their income and pursue new interpretation strategies. When negotiating and managing partnerships with sponsors, whose needs should take priority?
I work at Arlington Court, a National Trust property in North Devon that also holds the trust’s national carriage collection. We run a working stables, offering carriage rides to visitors around the gardens and grounds. This is not cheap. My most recent project at Arlington has been to begin an appeal for potential sponsors of the stables.
My search for sponsors has not been indiscriminate. Any potential
sponsor must be approved centrally and the trust has drawn up guidelines for properties seeking sponsorship, from which I would like to draw out three key points: Why would this company want to sponsor this event or activity? What is in it for them? Are they a company known for having good ethical and environmental principles?
Any company I approach must be in line with the trust’s core principles and suit its image. Every company the trust works with is passed through the corporate relations group. There are also environmental and ethical reports.
Make sure you and your potential sponsor know and understand your principles before you even begin negotiations.
Michelle Fullard
visitor services manager, Arlington Court, Devon
Sponsorship is hard to come by for most museums, so it is understandable that some museums have made concessions to encourage investment.
These might mean giving the sponsor editorial input into the exhibition or accepting a partnership with an inappropriate sponsor.
But the code of ethics states that museums should ‘strive for editorial
integrity and remain alert to the pressure that can be exerted by particular interest groups, including lenders and funders’, and it doesn’t seem unrealistic to expect museums to adhere to this. The Museums Association’s ethical guidelines on trading and commercial activities stipulate that when soliciting sponsorship, ‘museums should safeguard their own needs, objectives and reputation’.
But meeting these necessarily vague strictures shouldn’t prevent museums from also recognising sponsors’ priorities.
Commercial sponsors have an agenda to promote and are answerable
to private interests. The first responsibility of museums is to the public. Inappropriate sponsorship and bad practice arguably harm the reputation of all concerned.
Patrick Steel
website editor, Museums Association
I work at Arlington Court, a National Trust property in North Devon that also holds the trust’s national carriage collection. We run a working stables, offering carriage rides to visitors around the gardens and grounds. This is not cheap. My most recent project at Arlington has been to begin an appeal for potential sponsors of the stables.
My search for sponsors has not been indiscriminate. Any potential
sponsor must be approved centrally and the trust has drawn up guidelines for properties seeking sponsorship, from which I would like to draw out three key points: Why would this company want to sponsor this event or activity? What is in it for them? Are they a company known for having good ethical and environmental principles?
Any company I approach must be in line with the trust’s core principles and suit its image. Every company the trust works with is passed through the corporate relations group. There are also environmental and ethical reports.
Make sure you and your potential sponsor know and understand your principles before you even begin negotiations.
Michelle Fullard
visitor services manager, Arlington Court, Devon
Sponsorship is hard to come by for most museums, so it is understandable that some museums have made concessions to encourage investment.
These might mean giving the sponsor editorial input into the exhibition or accepting a partnership with an inappropriate sponsor.
But the code of ethics states that museums should ‘strive for editorial
integrity and remain alert to the pressure that can be exerted by particular interest groups, including lenders and funders’, and it doesn’t seem unrealistic to expect museums to adhere to this. The Museums Association’s ethical guidelines on trading and commercial activities stipulate that when soliciting sponsorship, ‘museums should safeguard their own needs, objectives and reputation’.
But meeting these necessarily vague strictures shouldn’t prevent museums from also recognising sponsors’ priorities.
Commercial sponsors have an agenda to promote and are answerable
to private interests. The first responsibility of museums is to the public. Inappropriate sponsorship and bad practice arguably harm the reputation of all concerned.
Patrick Steel
website editor, Museums Association
