Intelligent Funding
A more synchronised funding community, which prioritises the health of the whole ecology and maximises the value and contribution of all the funding groups
Context
Despite their common ground, and that by working together more closely all of their support could be better leveraged across the sector, the main public and private sector funding groups operate in silos. As a consequence there is a massively underdeveloped market for ideas, expertise, and collaboration across the funding landscape.
Taking forward the recommendations made in MMM’s 2007 provocation ‘The Art of Living’, this programme strand will focus on engaging the public and private sector funders of arts and culture, encouraging them to deepen the organisational and financial capacity of those they fund.
We believe that this could be achieved quite swiftly by accepting full cost recovery budgeting, recognising and even incentivising the necessity to build up working capital, reserves and endowments, lowering the costs of their financing and funding agreements and ensuring that their own funding programmes do not drive ‘mission creep’ in those they seek to support.
Activities
A group of public and private funders in the North East of England are being supported by David Carrington and the MMM team through a sequence of action exercises which are focusing on:
- What would a financially resilient organisation look like?
- What do funders do currently to inhibit prospects for organisations becoming financially resilient?
- What could funders do in future to enhance prospects of organisations becoming financially resilient?
