INTERVIEW:Stuart McLaughlin on the 20th anniversary this month of Allianz Business to Arts awards
WITH MANY businesses struggling to keep afloat in the current economic environment, now might not seem the ideal time to foster relationships between the business and arts communities. But Stuart McLaughlin, head of Business to Arts, an organisation that promotes collaboration between business and the cultural world, believes the time for forging mutually beneficial relationships is ripe.
McLaughlin knows all about the impact of recession. He joined Business to Arts from Accenture in early 2008. Months later, the recession hit. “In the last quarter of 2008, everything stopped. We lost 60 per cent of our income in a quarter. Companies that had been contributing for years retrenched in terms of funding.”
McLaughlin’s task was to rebuild the funding base, mainly by trying to diversify the income stream. While some long-term supports such as Deloitte, McCann Fitzgerald, KPMG, Mason Hayes and Curran remained with them, Business to Arts, which is still 90 per cent privately funded, set about finding a major partner who would contribute to a more focused approach to arts funding. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, already one of the largest corporate sponsors of arts and culture in the world through its charitable foundation, stepped into the role.
In conjunction with the company’s Ireland country leader, Business to Arts developed a three-year programme, New Stream. The money invested by Bank of America Merrill Lynch was used to train cultural organisations in how to develop fundraising skills, such as how to improve marketing strategies and engage with potential investors more effectively.
While a conscious attempt to move away from a philanthropic model of funding the arts, McLaughlin says one of the main aims of New Stream was to encourage arts organisations to reduce their reliance on public sector funding.
“Arts organisations have traditionally been very slow at accessing private sources of funding, particularly compared with sports bodies. There is a lot of money out there but you need to know how best to tap into that resource, show businesses how they will benefit and what arts involvement will offer them.”
McLaughlin says the strategy has paid off, with the € 100,000 invested by Bank of America Merrill Lynch in the first year generating € 1.2 million in funding and sponsorship for the arts and cultural groups involved.
This innovative approach is a long way from the founding ethos of Business to Arts. Established 23 years ago, the organisation’s initial focus was to assist companies that wanted to build corporate collections of art. “Corporate art collecting was, and still is to an extent, disproportionate in Ireland to the size of the market” says McLaughlin. “As well as the banks and big corporates, you had firms like Scott Tallon Walker. When they built a new building, they wanted Irish art. It became an integral part of the building itself.”
While the sale of art previously owned by banks and developers has been hitting the headlines of late, McLaughlin says that at the time, they formed an important part of the contemporary Irish art collecting scene. AIB had one of the best collections, “curated and collected very strategically”.
Today, Business to Arts’ activities are divided into three streams:
- helping arts organisations to develop fundraising skills;
- brokering partnerships between businesses and creative organisations, including advising businesses on the most suitable arts sponsorship opportunities;
- an advocacy role, whereby the organisation works with businesses, government and other policy groups in devising ways to encourage more private arts funding.
Business to Arts employs three people directly at its Temple Bar office and has an income of about € 250,000 a year. Of this, 10 per cent comes from government and the remainder from companies.
McLaughlin comes from a strong corporate background. Having built a career in IT and business consulting, working for major international companies including Fujitsu, Capgemini and Accenture, he made the move after he was charged with organising a personnel day at Accenture. “We knew people wanted something different from the typical training day. I hired 40 artists to come in and work with the staff for the day. It was a huge success.”
From there, McLaughlin, who had been involved in arts organisations in his personal life, threw himself into dealing with the nuts and bolts of Business to Arts, reassessing the cost base and the reformulation of the income stream. Arts and cultural organisations need to adopt this commercially minded focus, he believes. “No company is going to give money to an organisation that is not run efficiently in terms of cost.”
Nonetheless, he believes most arts and cultural organisations are inherently good at it. “Companies have been astounded at how efficiently the not-for-profit organisations are run. I think it’s because charities and arts organisations have to do a lot more with fewer resources.”
As for the future direction of arts funding, McLaughlin believes the multinational sector holds major opportunities.“We have most of the world’s top pharmaceutical companies and technology companies here in Ireland, most of which have substantial budgets for sponsorship and support of the arts. Our job is to tap into those.”
