Sir, – Fintan O’Toole cites the Arts Council’s RAISE initiative to assist arts organisations secure more philanthropic support (Culture Shock, Weekend Review, December 8th), but suggests “a significant chunk of the money raised will be swallowed up by the cost of raising it”. In fact, we, and the arts organisations that earned their place on our pilot project, are somewhat more ambitious than he assumes. In total, 54 organisations applied to join RAISE. We assessed these, and concluded 28 had the potential to raise €250,000 – not once but every year. From these we selected eight, and the pilot will see each of these receive up to €100,000 to help them reach that target.
So an investment of €800,000 by the Arts Council should stimulate a further €10 million in philanthropic giving over five years. For our organisations, while it is true it costs money to raise money, we hope when they have completed the project, the cost of their fundraising will be in or around the market average of 30 per cent.
Of course, we would all prefer if the Arts Council had unlimited funds to disperse, but in these extremely challenging times for the public finances, 70 per cent of something extra is better than 100 per cent of nothing. – Yours, etc,