Using Technology in Arts Fundraising

You can read the whole article here.

In it, Kate Romano outlines her experience raising funds for the opera Tokaido Road, opening at the Cheltenham Festival on Sunday 6 July 2014.

Her top 5 tips included:

1. Consider fundraising a creative act - fundraising is essential to the development of the project, and can even help frame the project, and tighten it up.

2. Don't fear the pros - be focused and passionate about what you are trying to achieve.

3. Don't be vague - be precise and if you can, put the work into empirical context.

4. Social media - follow and be followed. Social media is a key tool for arts fundraising.

5. Setbacks don't have to be failures - from the article," I had many setbacks: 62 corporate letters, no replies; 5 unsuccessful applications. But I learned things that don't work out as planned can often take a project in a new and surprising direction".

I liked that she saw fundraising as a journey in itself. The journey she was describing was clearly about the larger scale corporate donations, grants and trusts. It got me thinking about the role of technology in arts fundraising. I was curious about how much technology helped or hindered her fundraising for the opera she was involved with (it raised an impressive £20K) - on both the larger scale fundraising efforts and smaller donations.

A 2011 study from the Pew Charitable Trusts in America noted that 65% of organisations believed technology was "very important" for fundraising (81% for promoting arts, and 78% for audience engagement). Interesting stats, but have things moved on in three years?

Organisations like Culture Hive and Donor Finder are great assets in linking technology and fundraising, as are crowdfunding sites like Indigogo - especially on the smaller donation level.

Technology as an enabler for fundraising seems to be the future. Imagine mobile scanning at the door, where a patron could give a donation at the door via their mobile phone?

Ms. Romano's first point is dead on: consider fundraising a creative art - and use technology to enable it.

What have your experiences been with using technology and fundraising? Have you tried using Ticketsolve's fundraising tool?

Need help or a demo to see it in action? Get in touch!