A Grantseeker's Guide to Trusts & Foundations 

As your festival emerges and becomes more known you may discover that certain people wish to support your efforts by giving your organisation a donation of money to help you pursue your vision and goals. What’s more several of these people could make themselves known to you and wish to contribute regularly. If this is something you are experiencing congratulations it is a great sign that you are on the right track building love and loyalty within your audiences and community. How to manage their payments is a question for you and your team to arrange between each supporter. There are lots of payment platforms that can help streamline on-going donation arrangements such as Stripe or Square and there is nothing wrong receiving a regular cheque in the mail. 

What is more important to consider is why did these start giving? Who are they and how do we find more of them? And how do we look after them so they maintain their giving or even increase it? 

Unless they are the “angel” donor type and have been giving to the festival since an early stage of formation your patrons or donors come from your audiences. They are your loyalist attendees and informal ambassadors of your event. They decide to give to your festival because they have the means, sometimes barely, and wish to take their loyalty, love and commitment to your festival to a new level. Often it is hard to comprehend that you have created something with your team that inspires such adour and largesse in people but you have and should be proud of the fact. When one has a sizable number of donors like this it is a good idea to not only recognize them through mentions in programs, websites and in speeches but create a formal program around them that monitors and maintains connection. A year round calendar of events that show your appreciation to them as collective and provides deeper access and engagement with the festival they so love. Everyone wants to be a part of something bigger than themselves and you can give that to these supporters in spades. 

Your donors are not just any old audience members, they are the repeat offenders. An emotional and personal connection is key. Rather than wait for these individuals to make themselves known you can do a few things to grow your donor base 35.

Start with data, mine your ticketing data to discover who has attended your festival more than twice and cross reference that with how many events attended at each edition, if you have the capacity cross reference with postal code info if you have it to discover even more interesting results. You will now have a list of your most loyal audience members. You should even be able to glean who is your most loyal ticket buyer. Do you know this person? After recently completing this process myself and with a donor base of 200 individuals I was surprised to learn that no one in the organisation had ever met the person who over a decade had bought the most tickets and attended every edition. They were a mystery to us and yet our most passionate supporter! 

You can now begin to migrate your loyal attendees into your donors program if you have one or simply encourage them to give in their own way. Just be sure to recognize the longevity of their commitment when you ask for the donation and make it as personal as possible. At first asking for donations from those that have already given so much at the box office can be a little confronting but you will in time get used to it and ultimately see it as a natural part of audience engagement. 

Once in your donors program or on a regular giving plan do not relax! Maintain connection and ownership, gently encourage to increase regularly. After 5 years has passed for each donor it is time to speak with them about considering a major gift in their lifetime ($5000+ = 3000euro) if they have the means, again don’t be shy and if not in their lifetime request to be recognized in their will in the form of a bequest 36.

35. Aubrey Bergauer, “Audience Development: The Long Haul Model,” Medium (Medium, February 15, 2019), aubreybergauer.medium.com/audience-development-the-long-haul-model-3c381a8c0072.

36. Bergauer 2019.