Following a recent article North East arts organisations awarded over £1m to help them raise money by David Whetstone in Chronicle Live, Tees Valley Arts is delighted to announce that our application to the Arts Council England Catalyst Evolve Fund has been successful!
This fund supports arts organisations to try to raise funds from philanthropic donors, supporters and trusts – which might be easy if you’re a grand opera company in London or something like that, but is much harder if you’re a small participatory arts organisation working on the ground in the communities of the Tees Valley!
The award to TVA will help us spend some time on meeting with potential donors – which is half the battle – but the best thing is that for three years, it will match any money we are able to raise in this way, one for one – thus doubling the benefit to us!
A recent report from the Charities Trust, Royal Bank of Scotland and The Big Give said that match funding can be a ‘brilliant booster’ for fundraising, adding that 84% of their survey respondents had indicated that they were more likely to give if they knew that their contributions would be matched. The report said that match funding schemes helped to engage new supporters and to re-engage lapsed ones, and that they reassured potential donors that their chosen charities were trustworthy. Earlier this year TVA was awarded a grant from the Teesside Philanthropic Foundation to look at membership schemes, and now we can build on that to start attracting support from sponsors and donors. All of this will help TVA become more sustainable for the future, as we look forward to working with communities to get them engaged in the Tees Valley City of Culture bid for 2025.
Rowena Sommerville
CEO Tees Valley Arts
July 2016