In researching for the Money Matters! campaign we have discovered a number of resources, toolkits and other articles which may help organisations consider the three pillars of the Dynamism Investment Principle. As the campaign is now over and we begin to gather all the resources into one place we thought it would be useful to highlight some of the documents, websites and thinking that influenced our thinking in the campaign.

Business Model Innovation:

This pillar includes the use of IP and we know that this is an area where arts organisations could potentially create additional resource and income if they could identify and market artistic product that they own. Naomi Korn Associates are specialist consultants advising on copyright, licensing and data protection. For over 18 years, Naomi Korn Associates has developed free and openly licensed copyright, licensing and data protection help resources. These are suitable for staff working in cultural heritage, educational and publishing contexts and available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike Licence to enable free access and reuse.

Another great set of webinars are the Resources collated by NESTA – Arts & Culture Finance which include “Growing Programmes and Services” “Developing New Income Streams” and advice on capital fundraising. They also link to this great publication by IETM “To Sell or Not to Sell” – a bit wordy but a great guide to revenue and innovation business models, geared to cultural organisations.

If you fancy some inspiration take a look at this artists’ cooperative that raised £1 million to buy a pub, live in it and run it as an arts centre.

If you think you have a resource that your community wants to save – think about community shares. Community shares are a way for community groups to raise money. By buying shares and becoming part-owners of a business, local people can become supporters, volunteers and advocates for the business.

Community shares can be used to support many different types of business, like saving a local pub or setting up a renewable energy project. If an enterprise is working for the good of your local area, investment from local people can be invaluable. You can find out more about them and step by step guidance on the pages that start here.

People and Skills

The Dynamism Investment principle has a strong emphasis on a well supported workforce. The Prosper resources on the AMA Culture Hive website are old, but still worth reading, including “Capacity Building“, and “Managing Teams through Change“.

First port of call for a number of HR needs is the ACAS site – and in particular ACAS employer useful templates – Example letters, forms, policies and HR documents for employers and HR managers to download and adapt for their own workplace.

Other influential reading our research

Although over a decade old, the work by Missions Models Money was hugely influential. Some of it is not publicly available now – but what was somewhat depressing was how familiar the challenges were and how few of the recommendations made back then were actually implemented. The work of Margaret Boulton was particularly influential. Here is is her report with David Carrington “New and Alternative Financial Instruments” which still has resonance as we emerge from the pandemic. Even more prescient, and a read that I cannot recommend highly enough, is “Capital Matters“, which morphed into our campaign title “Money Matters!”

We also looked at Mycake – the financial benchmarking service for the third sector. They have a set of useful reports and resources generally and in particular we looked at the analysis of business closure reasons during the early part of the pandemic and what we can learn.

Before the pandemic truly hit our focus was going to be about financial models adapted from the for profit finance sector. As the sector recovers, this may be a conversation that we can build again: a great place to start is this paper from the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) in the USA- Patient Capital. “Nonprofits can find themselves starved for “patient capital”: The money that pays the bills while an organization learns to fend for itself. To better feed themselves, some nonprofits are using capital campaigns to generate infusions of capital like those that for-profit businesses get from equity investors.“

We hope you enjoyed the Money Matters campaign and find more inspiration for your Dynamism journey in the links provided above. Feel free to comment, share your insights or recommend further reading in the comment setction.