Money talks

The stars are coming out to help the Scottish National Portrait Gallery pay for its £17.6m redevelopment, but there will be no celebrity endorsements or reality-show wannabes singing out of tune for a good cause.

The shining examples are, in fact, the celestial bodies captured by the 19th-century artist William Hole in his mural of the night sky, which adorns the ceiling of the gallery’s entrance hall. It features some 2,222 stars and they’re all “for sale” at prices ranging from £250-£750.

Simply by clicking on the museum’s website, art lovers and space cadets alike can grab a star for themselves or a loved one and literally put their names up in lights, while also doing their bit for culture.

But there’s a serious mission behind this light-hearted voyage into the cosmos. While four-fifths of the money for the new gallery – planned to open in late 2011 – is in place, this age of financial uncertainty means the fundraisers have to boldly go where few have gone before.

“This campaign is a way of trying to reach out beyond our traditional supporters, friends and members to potential first-timers in a difficult economic climate,” says Catrin Tilley, director of development and communications at the National Galleries of Scotland.

“There was considerable corporate support for the Playfair Project at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 2004, but we’re not seeing so much of that now. Trusts and foundations are still giving, but at lower levels. There seem to be philanthropic individuals out there, but there’s so much competition.”

Tilley is ideally placed to think outside the box when it comes to persuading punters to put their hands in their pockets. As deputy director of Comic Relief, she sought the first sponsors for the original Red Nose events, helped establish the charity’s infrastructure and then sat atop the British Telecom Tower on the big night, phoning the pledge figures through to the BBC.

“That experience shows how important it is to put ‘fun’ into fundraising, particularly now,” she says. “Institutions looking towards diversifying their income streams so as not to be dependent on the public purse have to ensure everyone in the organisation is committed to what they’re trying to achieve. It’s essential that fundraisers sell what they’re doing internally as well as externally.”

The museum funding crisis could last a decade or more, according to Colin Tweedy, chief executive of Arts and Business. Last month he announced that private investment in the arts had fallen 7 per cent in 2008-09.

“There’s a real squeeze on medium-sized museums outside London, the ones who relied on sponsorship from the local companies who themselves have been hammered and feel they can no longer spend money that way while making people redundant,” says Tweedy.

“It’s imperative that those institutions think innovatively and work together on fundraising; I urge the contemporary city gallery and more traditional collections, for example, to join forces and use the internet to attract new sponsors and new ideas.”

Making connections

“This is the age when museums should be friend-raising if they’re not actively fundraising,” Tweedy says. “They should be consolidating existing relationships and forging new partnerships, building up a wider audience base that could benefit potential sponsors. Carefully curated fun events in buildings can also raise museums’ profiles.

“Local authority museums face the greatest danger; central funds will also be hammered and there’s an idea floating around of distributing money along the lines of a low-price airline concept, picking and choosing services like schools, rubbish collections and so on,” Tweedy continues. “Museums could find themselves at the bottom of the list and that would be a disaster.

“The arts may be seen as an easy area for cuts to be made but without continued support – and, let’s face it, there are fewer votes here than in other areas of council spending – museums could be lost forever,” he concludes.

The Hepworth Wakefield has taken steps to ensure its current local authority status does not impede the search for new private donors in the run-up to its planned opening in early 2011.

It has formed its own independent charitable body in order to approach the kind of potential funders – including trusts, foundations and wealthy individuals – that are traditionally out of reach of a local council. The Hepworth has already nearly reached its £30m target to support the capital project.

“We don’t have a track record to trade off as we’re not operational, so we try to captivate donors with the sheer ambition and scope of the project,” says Racheal Johnson, senior development officer at the Hepworth Wakefield.

“As a new organisation, there’s an opportunity for them to have an impact right from the start. While some are interested in the artistic side, the regeneration element has been really important for others; Wakefield is a deprived area and the facilities, along with our education programme, are a big draw.”

The fundraising programme began 18 months ago and Johnson admits the public money already in place would probably not be so readily available now.

“It’s been difficult; a number of trusts have told us recently that their grant-making is on hold or that they are only supporting organisations with whom they have existing relationships,” she says. “Others have said that if we’d approached them two years earlier, we would probably have received a much bigger grant.

“We’ve had to tear up our list of potential corporate sponsors because a lot of people in the region are not able to provide the level of support we hoped for; we’re looking at alternatives such as the big supermarkets, who seem to have weathered the storm better than some of the financial organisations, who have traditionally been prolific supporters of the arts.”

Challenging times call for flexible fundraising and the Hepworth Wakefield is investing time and effort in cultivating personal relationships with bodies that, it hopes, could pay dividends when the economy improves.

Many businesses are also looking for opportunities to show their social responsibility credentials as opposed to traditional hospitality arrangements, adds Johnson: “They want to get their employees involved and it’s something we’re looking to develop.”

Similar arrangements are in full swing at Ironbridge Gorge, a collection of ten museums in Shropshire, where a number of long-term donors have been unable to provide funds due to low interest rates and the fall in the value of endowments.

“We are working with them to use their contacts to provide gifts in kind such as materials and specialist advice,” says Anna Brennand, deputy CEO and director of finance and resources.

“Raising funds from private sources is still about relationships and about having the right pitch,” Brennand continues. “It’s important to look at the motivation of the prospective donor and then ensure that the funding proposition matches their requirements.

“Being able to demonstrate success, enhancement and sustainability as a result of the funding are also important as is long-term engagement with the donor. If these factors are met then it’s still possible to raise funds even in the current climate,” Brennand says.

The days when pure brand association alone could attract huge donations have gone forever, says Claire Williamson, assistant director, marketing and development, at London Transport Museum.

But hard work, forward planning and a greater understanding of how the relationship between the funder and the funded works can pay dividends, she adds.

“Our development income actually rose 20 per cent in 2009 but this is because we are working much harder for the funds we raise and are offering a lot more value to our corporate partners in return for their donation,” says Williamson, who reveals one free-thinking donor handed over £400,000 of free advertising space which resulted in a 20 per cent increase in visitor numbers.

Power breakfasts

At the end of 2008, the museum noticed that some companies were citing the recession as a reason not to re-sign to its corporate members scheme.

A series of high-profile debates on transport issues and a programme of business breakfasts hosted by ministers and industry bigwigs were initiated to provide networking opportunities for sponsors. As a result, income from the scheme increased 15 per cent to £250,000 in the last eight months of 2009.

“While such initiatives are expensive in staff time, they have enabled the museum to raise the profile of its work, meet new potential funders and keep our galleries exciting, well informed and up-to-date,” Williamson says. “Our fundraising community has grown exponentially as a result of our efforts to please our partners.

“We can remind a sponsor of the value they have had from their relationship with us and, as a result, hopefully make another successful bid for support,” she says.

A quest for business partners straight from the “if-you-don’t-ask-you-don’t-get” handbook has reaped rewards for the South London Gallery (SLG).

Aware that financial giant Ernst & Young – based in the same Southwark neighbourhood – was a keen supporter of the arts, SLG director Margot Heller approached the company’s corporate and social responsibility team to talk about the gallery’s education and outreach programmes.

“It was a long shot as most of their sponsorship was concentrated on large-scale exhibitions and events, but we talked about what we could do together,” says Heller.

The result was the Double Take programme through which local schools were encouraged to curate their own exhibitions featuring items from the collections of both Ernst & Young and the gallery itself. The continuing 18-month project won the Arts & Business Young People award late last year.

The gallery also received £472,000 from the Arts Council England’s £40m Sustain fund, which was set up to help institutions maintain their artistic programmes through the recession.

“Had we not been successful with that, we could have been facing very serious problems,” says Heller who is also overseeing a £1.8m redevelopment programme that is due for completion in June. It will create new exhibition spaces, an education studio, cafe and an apartment for a programme of artists’ residencies.

Current fundraising efforts have benefited from the decision to negotiate the gallery’s “independence” from Southwark council seven years ago, but Heller feels a great deal of sympathy for those less fortunate.

“Having worked closely with and within local authorities, I understand the pressures smaller museums are facing in the light of public spending cuts. Sadly, there is an emphasis on the ‘new’, which means that very good organisations can go unsupported and will struggle.”

John Holt is a freelance journalist

Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Scheme to redevelop the gallery, which is housed in an arts and crafts building that opened in 1889 as the world’s first purpose-built portrait gallery.

Opening 2011
Target £17.6m
Achieved £14.9m
Main funders Scottish Government £5.1m, Heritage Lottery Fund £4.5m

Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire

Designed by architect David Chipperfield, the new-build Hepworth Wakefield will show for the first time a unique collection of sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, who was born and raised in Wakefield.

Opening 2011
Target £30m
Achieved £29.2m
Main funders Wakefield Council, Arts Council England, Heritage Lottery Fund, Yorkshire Forward, Homes and Communities Agency, European Regional Development Fund, Headley Trust, Garfield Weston Foundation, Henry Moore Foundation

South London Gallery

The gallery is redeveloping a neighbouring house to create new exhibition spaces, education studio, cafe and apartment for a programme of artists’ residencies. The architect is 6a.

Opening June 2010
Target £1.8m
Achieved £1.773m
Main funders Reed Foundation, Clore Duffield Foundation, Outset Contemporary Art Fund

Blists Hill Victorian Town, Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire

A range of improvements were made across the town, one of ten museums at Ironbridge, including creating a visitor centre, mine railway and a new parade of shops along Canal St.

Opened 2009
Cost £12m
Main funders Advantage West Midlands, European Regional Development Fund

London Transport Museum

The redeveloped museum tells the story of public transport and the development of London over the last 200 years.

Opened 2007
Cost £22.4m
Main funders Heritage Lottery Fund, Transport for London, London Transport Museum Friends