Special events to cultivate major donors — Goldsmith’s £1.3m capital campaign
Background
Goldsmiths is recognised globally for its schools of fine art and curating, and has renowned alumni and an energetic, diverse student body.
Although Goldsmiths was founded on philanthropy thanks to its founders The Goldsmiths’ Company, it does not have an embedded history of fundraising, nor does it rely on philanthropic funding to help carry out its core mission. Until very recently, the development and alumni office focused primarily on alumni relations and lower-level regular giving, managing only a handful of scholarship major donors.
This campaign was created to support the renovation of one of its galleries — the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (Goldsmiths CCA) — by raising £1million towards the building costs. As well as displaying world-class art, the gallery aims to bring professional practising artists on to campus to work together with our students and the academic community. The gallery was an important step for the University in helping to fulfill on its vision to support and inspire future creative talent.
Goldsmiths CCA had originally been conceived as a £2 million building project, against which £1.7 million had been raised through an alumni art auction and a few targeted trusts and foundations approaches in 2015. This fundraising had been undertaken by the academic Art Department, with little reference to the Development & Alumni Office, which at that time had had no director of development or fundraisers. By the time a new director of development was in post in Spring 2016, the project costs had risen to £3.46m but there were no plans to commence building work until it was fully funded.
The story so far
As well as helping the support future creative talent, the University hoped that its Centre for Contemporary Art would help enhance its profile as a leading institution in the visual arts, and by doing so take its research and teaching in these fields from excellent to truly outstanding. In addition, as Goldsmiths CCA is free and open to the general public, the benefits would reach far beyond its students.
The ambition was to enhance Goldsmiths’ profile as a leading institution in the visual arts, and to take our research and teaching in these fields from excellent to truly outstanding.
The strategy was founded on a number of key elements. In order to reach the £1million target, the University took the decision to focus on raising major (six-figure) gifts, specifically through inviting donors to name the eight gallery spaces. Each of these were gifts of more than £150,000, which were based on benchmarking with other institutions and the relative size/prestige of each space.
A campaign working group was created, which consisted of well-connected individuals to help make introductions to major funders and support the fundraising. Following the first working group a case for support was drafted along with a series of marketing materials.
Following research undertaken by the team, prospective funders were prioritised according to gift potential and warmth to Goldsmiths, with the highest value/warmest approached first. Prospects represented a mix of trusts/foundations with a stated interest in funding art-related causes, education or in preserving London heritage, and high net worth individuals with a demonstrated interest in contemporary art.
The University took the decision to repurpose an existing dinner event at the Goldsmiths’ Company’s Goldsmiths’ Hall in the City, which would as a centre-piece activity in the campaign. The event was used as a cultivation opportunity to engage internal and external audiences and build belief in and excitement around the campaign and project.
Following the event, prospects were invited to visit Goldsmiths/the CCA building site.
In addition to making approaches to major gift donors to names spaces within the gallery, the university also embarked on a new programme called Goldsmiths CCA Founders to invite donations of £5,000 and £10,000. The aim was to recruit 25–50 donors, collectively raising at least £250,000. The donations were divided equally between capital costs and programming costs in the CCA’s first year of operation. One of our major donors to the capital campaign, Oak Foundation, also agreed to a matched gift of up to a total of £150,000 towards the programming costs (in addition to a further £150,000 unmatched element of the gift).
In total, the University raised more than £1.3million towards the campaign.
Highlights included:
· 44 donations and 7 gallery spaces were named by donors;
· a total of £235,515 was raised through the CCA Founders programme, of which £150,000 was matched by the Oak Foundation.
· a further £764,500 was raised towards artistic programming, which included a gift from The Goldsmiths’ Company Charity to fund the post of an engagement curator for three years.
Lessons learnt
There were a number of challenges ahead of launching the campaign, which included:
· a lack of University-wide or leadership buy-in to the project;
· previous donors to this or other projects had largely not been stewarded;
· a lack of researched prospects and initially no fundraisers or prospect researcher on the team;
· no time for planning and preparation as there had not previously been a timetable in place for the building project
The University moved quickly to build the infrastructure capable of delivering such a campaign, including recruiting most of the team who would be involved — namely two Senior Development Managers and the Prospect Research Officer.
Many institutional lessons have been learned about how to approach major gift fundraising and campaigns through this project. The University aims to build on the success of the campaign and the resulting increased institutional confidence and understanding of philanthropic fundraising. In the mid-to-long-term, it aims to develop a major University-wide fundraising campaign to raise significant funds for agreed institutional priorities.
Another tactic which worked was the repurposing of an existing event in the University’s calendar at the Goldsmiths’ Company’s livery hall in the City of London. This also included teaming up with Act IV, an arts and charity fundraising consultancy. The Goldsmiths’ Company had offered use of the hall as a gift in kind for this annual dinner (which had previously been focused primarily on honouring the University’s honorary fellows, with heads of academic departments, senior leadership and members of Council [the governing body] as guests).
The event was repurposed into a cultivation opportunity to promote the CCA campaign and celebrate more broadly Goldsmiths’ contribution to the arts and cultural sector in the UK and beyond. The University was careful to ensure that the dinner did not depart too far from its original function. Ultimately it was a great success that showcased the talents of a number of students and alumni, and built awareness and good will towards the project with our campaign working group and a number of prospects they invited, as well as with colleagues internally.
You can hear more on major donor giving from a line-up of speakers at this year’s CASE Europe Annual Conference in Birmingham on 27–29 August 2019. View the full programme here.
Lucy Nagar, Senior Development Manager (Development & Alumni), Goldsmiths, University of London
