As we enter the final phase of the Future of Philanthropy series, we wanted to do some deep dives into individual nonprofit sectors—the first being arts and culture.
We have explored many pressing challenges and talked to many nonprofit leaders, who shared their experience, insights, and practical wisdom about our many challenges. And while it’s difficult to summarize more than nine months of articles and interviews, here are my five key takeaways about the future of philanthropy in the arts and culture sector:
1) Arts and culture advocacy is as important as mission advocacy.
In our last roundtable Q&A, we asked three nonprofit leaders in the arts what they saw as the biggest future challenge for arts and culture philanthropy. In some way, shape, or form, they all hit on the idea that one of our biggest challenges is the need for stronger advocacy for arts and culture institutions overall. Yes, advocacy for our individual missions, but also demonstration of the overall power, value, and impact of arts and culture institutions.
As far back as 2017, in the last Culture Track survey, arts and culture organizations ranked more than halfway down a list of recipients of philanthropic giving—far behind categories like children’s services, religion, healthcare, animal welfare, and education. This year, again, that data was confirmed by the Fidelity Charitable Giving Report and the Next Generation of Philanthropy survey from the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
Arts and culture institutions don’t rank nearly as high as they should, given the enormous scope of our sector’s economic, social, and individual impact. So, if the Culture Track survey is correct and the top reasons for donating to cultural institutions are based on impact, then we need to do a much better job of educating donors and decision makers about the value we offer.
As Anne Fitzgibbon, Founder and Executive Director of The Harmony Program, said during our last panel: “A lot of these folks need to be educated in the broad importance of what we do.”
Andrew Berg, Chief Development Officer of Detroit Opera, told a wonderful story about a 97-year-old donor who was greatly impacted by the arts when she was growing up. She wanted her children and grandchildren to have an opportunity to benefit from the arts, just like she did, even if the experience of it would be different for them than it was for her.
That passion for the benefits of arts and culture—for the wondrous experience of it, from generation to generation—has to be part of our story. It’s the foundational building block in each of our own stories: an experience of arts and culture institutions providing something powerful, impactful, and indispensable, for which there is no substitute.
2) Strive for the broadest possible engagement.
It’s no secret that the importance of big gifts is growing as the pyramid narrows and fewer people give overall, while the wealthy give more. At the same time, membership and subscriber revenues are down dramatically, as shown in this study by Southern Methodist University’s DataArts project. Half of museums have not recovered to pre-pandemic attendance rates, according to the American Alliance of Museums. And federal funding is declining as a matter of policy.
To address these trends, as well as the financial volatility they create, it’s “all hands on deck” for arts and culture organizations. Some of the responses we’re seeing:
- ALL LEVELS: While big gifts and big donors receive a lot of attention today, many arts and culture nonprofits are working overtime to secure large numbers of recurring donations at every level—creating sticky relationships that provide steady financial support, in addition to chasing “the big ones.”
- YOUNGER DONORS: As Jane Hargraft, founder of the Hargraft Group, noted, courting younger donors can be a “20 to 25 year play,” and engagement is happening through social clubs, special events, Associate Boards, and other vehicles. These are the major gift donors of the future, and they need to be engaged today because each successive generation is becoming less and less likely to be philanthropic, with GenZ about half as likely as Boomers to give to arts and culture.
- PROGRAMMING: While fundraising should not drive programming, it can be a valuable lens for helping assess program viability and sustainability. In fact, programming and fundraising teams are increasingly finding productive ways to partner, with a goal of sustained stakeholder engagement. For example, the Detroit Opera is starting a “Big Questions” series that they hope will facilitate ongoing conversations with their audience and “reach donors who can be engaged more broadly and deeply across the course of a whole season.”
- BOARDS: The Board is a critical conduit to large donors, and many organizations are being much more explicit and intentional about requiring Board members to open their networks and facilitate the solicitation process.
3) Philanthropy needs a seat at the leadership table.
Given the increasingly critical role of philanthropic revenue, the fundraising lead needs to be at the leadership table, making a contribution—whether it’s contributing to conversations about strategy, or programming, or finance.
Adam Gerdts, Senior Vice President of Philanthropy at NY Philharmonic, put it best: “We have to advocate for why we need that seat at the table. If I’m not intimately knowledgeable about how strategic decisions come together, it reduces my effectiveness out in the field, engaging with our biggest donors and our board, and I won’t be as effective at getting my team prepared to engage donors up and down the pyramid. So, I think we can’t take for granted the need to advocate for ourselves in forging a connection with institutional leadership.”
4) Maximize the value proposition for staff.
We saw back in 2022-2023 with the Great Rethink series that staffing was a significant concern. Today, in a time of limited resources, arts and culture nonprofits are finding creative ways to mentor, train, and develop staff. And while we have to accept that retention may always be an issue in a tight talent market with high demand for trained fundraisers, connecting staff to the mission can be one of our most successful retention strategies. (Past articles on the employer value proposition here, here, and here, and an excellent Q&A on talent development here.)
As said by Noelle Delage, Chief Communications & Philanthropy Officer for the Denver Zoo: “While money, salary, and benefits are always going to be a challenge for us in the nonprofit space, I also think we have an amazing opportunity now to be more intentional about Value, including things like impact, community, enrichment, optimism – the things that nonprofits deliver for society… We create experiences for our donors that they can’t have anywhere else, and we have experiences as employees that other people don’t have.”
5) Celebrate (and de-stigmatize) inclusion.
Jane Hargraft sees ‘wokeness’ as one of the biggest challenges in arts and culture philanthropy. She said: “At a lot of the organizations I’ve been involved with, there’s been a lot of work done in terms of inclusivity, and making sure that the staff, and audiences, and artists reflect our community—and these things should be happening. But at this point in time, donors are not shy about saying, ‘I’m not going to support something that I don’t believe in politically.’”
But inclusion is essential to a healthy arts and culture sector.
- According to the Culture Track survey, two of the most important reasons audiences participate in arts and culture activities are “experiencing new things” and “learning something new.” Inclusion is essential to delivering new content that brings our audiences back again and again.
- At the same time, the biggest barrier to participation in cultural activities is the feeling of exclusion—i.e., that the activity is “not for someone like me.” Inclusion efforts open the door to those who otherwise might forgo the experience.
- According to the SMU DataArts project: “Inclusion is an important driver of retention, job satisfaction, and likelihood to recommend an employer; and these findings hold true across demographic categories.”
In one of our previous panel discussions, Patrick Muhlen, Chief Managing Director of Ballet Hispánico, put it this way: “Ballet Hispánico is a culturally specific dance company with diversity in our DNA. It’s why we’re here. So, what it’s done for us, particularly in terms of recruiting and retention, is that we still maintain that joyful tone, but we’re very serious now. We’re very determined. We have had some donors tell us, ‘You look too left-wing. We’re going to give elsewhere.’ But that just makes us more determined to succeed in our mission.”
Inclusion is an inherent part of our mission in artistic and cultural institutions; it provides the new experiences and learning that audiences want, and the productive workplace our employees need; so, inclusion and its practical benefits must be part of our advocacy in conversations with donors.
To sum it up, in times as fraught and volatile as these, the future of arts and culture philanthropy lies in crafting impactful strategies around advocacy, engagement, leadership, value, and inclusion.
We have an exciting, inspiring story to tell—contrary to what the data might suggest. We just need to update it for new times and new generations. Then advocate for it across the board with audiences, donors, and staff, to ensure that the future of arts and culture nonprofits is as bright as the light these institutions shine on the world.
Contributing author:
Anne Johnson, Managing Director and Senior Vice President, Arts Practice Lead, Aspen Leadership Group
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NEXT UP on June 17: ALG Managing Director Steven Wallace will moderate a panel discussion on the future of healthcare philanthropy, featuring Laurie Kelley, who leads the system-wide Office of Philanthropy for Providence, and Michael Delzotti, FAHP, CFRE, who is president and chief operating officer of the Huntsman Cancer Foundation.
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