This week’s announcement that the UK’s premier prize for books by women was diversifying into nonfiction makes good sense for an award whose primary mission is to win them more readers. Men, as is repeatedly shown, don’t generally read novels at all, let alone ones written by women. Just think how many more of this elusive 50% would flock to it, the thinking goes, if it included works about, say, nature, politics and history.
In order for the new award to go ahead this year, £200,000 in sponsorship needs to be found before the end of May by the organisation currently known as the Women’s prize for fiction. Though it has never been averse to a name change, having previously been known as both the Orange and the Baileys prize, before settling for its current title in 2017, it is not dangling the enticement of a headline sponsorship this time round. Instead it is inviting donors to join a “family of sponsors”, which includes Baileys and Amazon’s audiobooks subsidiary, Audible.
Though to outsiders such nuances might seem unimportant, they reflect a step-change in the approach to corporate arts patronage. No longer is it mainly the preserve of marketing departments, bankrolled to get a company’s name into the public realm; today, companies want to be seen to align themselves more sustainably with causes sympathetic to their brands. The Women’s prize fundraisers are not biting their nails: their feminist mission chimes with the times.
For many other organisations, it is a harder ask. But, unfortunately, the shrinkage of state subsidy across the cultural sector means that philanthropy is ever more necessary, even as a succession of high-level acts of conscience are disrupting the traditional model. Nobody today wants to be tainted with the money of pharmaceutical or oil giants.
On the upside, an Arts Council England report last year revealed an annual private investment of £800m in the not-for-profit cultural sector: 44% of it (including memberships) was from individuals; 41% came from trusts and foundations; and 15% from corporate giving. This dwarfed the arts council’s own grant-in-aid budget at the time of £341m a year. On the downside, 89% of this money went to England’s 50 largest organisations, up from 60% in 2019. It also favoured those with a building, and based in London.
But while there might not be a level playing field, there are clever players. Apart from an emergency grant to help it through the pandemic, the Women’s prize has never received public funding but has ducked and dived its way to an annual turnover of £550,000. Its “donor family” includes a YouTuber, Rosianna Halse Rojas, who it rewarded by nominating her for a first-time philanthropy prize.
Elsewhere, an imaginative scheme to enlist arts organisations themselves as donors was launched last month. Thirty venues have so far signed up to the scheme to offer unsold tickets to those unable to pay, through food banks and housing charities. In such hard times, with a government tone deaf to the value and needs of culture, a little can go far – whether it is money or fresh thinking.
