Cultural giving among America’s top philanthropists fell slightly in 2014, according to an annual ranking of the 50 largest charitable donors released last week by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. This news might come as a surprise to US museum directors, who have been swiftly—and quietly—raising eight-, nine-, and ten-figure donations from eager patrons. Their ambitious capital campaigns make the austerity measures of the recent recession feel like a distant memory.
Last month, the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Houston, announced that it had quietly raised nearly $330m of a $450m capital expansion and endowment campaign in less than two years. Also last month, the Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach announced it had raised $34m of its $60m expansion in less than 12 months.
Giving quietly
Across the US, museum fundraising is on a fast track. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma), which is planning a $600m Peter Zumthor-designed revamp of its campus, is now hiring to boost its individual giving. An advertisement on Lacma’s website for an associate vice president of individual giving says the museum plans to “quietly raise $100m to set the stage for launching a larger campaign within the next 12 to 24 months”. The museum declined to comment on the campaign: negotiating with potential donors often requires delicacy and discretion until initial gifts are secured. Gary Tinterow, the director of the MFA Houston, says a quiet phase of fundraising before going public gave “our trustees and close circle of friends first dibs on naming opportunities”.
“After 2008, a lot of plans had to be shelved or postponed because it was not realistic to entertain a major campaign,” says the museum consultant András Szántó. Now the US economy is in recovery and the number of US millionaires rose by a record 17% in 2013, according to a survey by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management. Wealthy donors are reopening their chequebooks on an unprecedented scale. Giving to arts, culture and humanities non-profits rose by around 22% to $16.6bn between 2009 and 2013, according to a report by the Giving USA Foundation. “Any smart development officer knows now is a good time to gear up for these big projects,” Szántó says.
Going public
The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC is in the midst of what its lead fundraiser Cynthia Brandt-Stover describes as “the most ambitious campaign ever undertaken by a cultural institution”. The Smithsonian has quietly raised $1bn over the past four years. Brandt-Stover tells us that since the Smithsonian launched its public fundraising campaign just four months ago donors have confirmed a further $100m. The institution hopes to secure $1.5bn by 2017.
“Coming out of the biggest financial crisis in virtually all of our lives, people are optimistic and are searching for legacy,” says Dennis Scholl, a vice president at the Knight Foundation. This impulse is particularly significant as the baby-boomer generation reaches retirement age: “We are experiencing the greatest intergenerational wealth transfer in history,” Szántó says.
Directors are also anxious to secure their legacies. Many museums with expansions underway, such as the Frick Collection and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the MFA Houston, have hired new directors over the past two to five years—approximately the amount of time it takes to lay the groundwork for a major campaign.
In some ways, fundraising strategies remain the same as before the recession. Institutions still seek out big donors during a “quiet phase” and announce their plans once they have secured a significant percentage of their goal. “You need to be in the quiet phase long enough to get a sense of what is possible,” says Kimerly Rorschach, the director of the Seattle Art Museum. Her institution was among the hardest hit by the recession. Over the past six months Rorschach has been discreetly lining up commitments for a $45m renovation of its Asian Art Museum and hopes to break ground in 2017.
Seeking new donors
With an eye on sustainability, museum leaders say they are more focused on building a broad base of supporters than they were before the recession. The Smithsonian has received 192 gifts of $1m or more. “We don’t have a $300m gift—we’re getting there the hard way,” Brandt-Stover says. “The days of getting six people in a room and raising big money? I think those days are in the past,” Scholl says.
Last month, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) posted an advertisement for a leadership-gifts officer to cultivate donors willing to make multi-year pledges of $100,000. In less than five years, the museum has raised more than $570m from 173 donors for its $610m expansion and capital campaign. Neal Benezra, the director of SFMoMA, says that, to meet expanded operating costs, “we have to have a much bigger tent of supporters in place by the time the museum reopens. We need to come out of the public phase with several hundred new donors.”
Some question whether building projects are the best use of these newly available funds. The arts consultant Adrian Ellis says: “What will be interesting is whether dynamic, imaginative museum directors and boards use the opportunities all this presents by persuading their donors of the importance of initiatives that allow their institutions to invest in stewardship, scholarship, education and recalibrated relationships with their communities, or whether they expand their footprint further through traditional, branded real-estate plays.”