Bringing the understated into view

Outside of the readership of Philanthropy UK, most people are unaware that philanthropic trusts and foundations play an understated yet vital role in funding the arts. The recently published two-volume publication, ‘Good Foundations’, the outcome of my two-year research fellowship at the University of the Arts London, sheds new light on this under-scrutinised sector. Good Foundations documents the affairs and achievements of one particular philanthropic charity, the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation (RHF), whose origins lay in the fashion scene of 1960s London, and it examines the different outcomes that have resulted from its support for artists and for arts organisations. It also provides an overview of the current map of arts funding and analyses in unprecedented detail the specific contribution made within that by philanthropic trusts.

The RHF decided early on that it would have a limited life-span and by the end of this year will have ‘spent out’ its £8m endowment, thirteen years after its first grant was made. As its end date approached the Foundation became more reflective about its activities, and more eager to learn about what its investment had achieved. The trustees recognised that their desire to investigate and document the outcomes of the RHF’s spending could be shaped into a research project that would have a wider public benefit.

Alongside an extensive programme of interviews with individuals representing a wide array of roles within philanthropy and the arts, each element of the research involved engagement with archives of some kind. Most obviously, it was the contents of a conventional paper-based archive that enabled me to piece together an account of the life and times of the RHF. The configuration of a jigsaw which had never previously been assembled and which had become fragmented - over time, and in individual memories - in order to produce a plausible and uncontested (by the current trustees) record of the Foundation relied heavily on the authoritative, if at times unruly, archive of official minutes, correspondence and sundry other items of official documentation that the organisation had accumulated and had chosen to preserve.

This archive of official paperwork provided an objective counterpoint to the subjective, and often conflicting, testimonies of the surviving individuals who had formed the human core of the organisation for nearly two decades. And yet… two vital pieces of the jigsaw remained elusive, beyond the power of the official documentation to conjure forth: the two founding figureheads of the charity, Adel Rootstein and Rick Hopkins, now deceased. Integrating these two pervasive but absent characters into the narrative required an act of imaginative reconstruction which seemed to require the attributes not just of the academic researcher, but of the novelist, the detective and the high court judge.

My survey of the bigger picture of charitable giving to the arts found there is no authoritative and comprehensive evidence-base documenting the contribution that trusts and foundations make to the arts. In order to campaign more effectively for an increase in support from this funding sector, more data is needed from grant-makers to complement the information gathered from arts organisations through the Private Investment Benchmarking Survey carried out by Arts & Business (A&B).
 
There is an overriding need to develop research partnerships between bodies working in this sector, such as A&B and the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) to achieve more accurate statistical information about funding for the arts. To provide a comprehensive snapshot of the range and amount of funding given in a particular year, arts research and development agencies, such as Arts Council England (ACE) or A&B, might also consider working with an alliance of arts supporting trusts and foundations to commission a research project for the arts sector which would mirror the ‘Where the Green Grants Went’ project initiated by environment-focused trusts.

Targeted advocacy, in partnership with arts policy bodies such as ACE and the Department for Culture Media and Sport and based on evidence of the social impacts of the arts, would help to maximise the amount of funding given to the arts by trusts and foundations with generalist objectives. Future-oriented ideas forums (such as Mission, Money, Models, initiated by the Jerwood Foundation in partnership with A&B) could foster debate about the strategic priorities for funding with an ‘arts for arts’ sake’ philosophy. This could be informed by a survey of artists and arts organisations to identify what aspects of their current practice and operations are ‘hard to fund’. Advocacy is also needed to argue for the continued relevance and value of the trust model of charitable support, which can provide an effective vehicle for sustained, planned and targeted giving, as a complement to the more spontaneous acts of giving encouraged by Gift Aid.

Within the present context of diminishing public subsidy, private sector investment in the arts is increasingly significant. In an ever more competitive fundraising environment, the challenge for the arts will be to increase its share of the c.£2 billion that CAF estimates trusts and foundations give away each year. To achieve this end, the arts sector must make a collective effort to get to know more about how trusts and foundations think and operate and recognise that every funder has different priorities, therefore each individual case for support must be tailored to address the specific aims and priorities of the organisation from which funding is sought.

It is hoped that Good Foundations – along with a new legacy website, launched in May 2008, which records for posterity the outcomes of Adel Rootstein’s and Rick Hopkins’ philanthropic investment - will help to further raise awareness of and provoke discussion about the state and the future of philanthropy in the UK, and that it will assist and encourage other foundations and individual philanthropists to find other new and exciting ways to support good causes, and in particular the arts.

• Good Foundations can be purchased on-line and will be available in PDF form later in the year at the Rootstein Hopkins Foundation legacy website.
  

Paul Glinkowski is Senior Researcher at the Engine Room, Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London. He is currently working on an evaluation of the Wellcome Trust’s Sciart funding programme.