Fundraising strategy causes board split
Howard Lake | 22 May 2014 | News
A row over the fundraising direction of one of Ireland’s leading concert venues has contributed to the resignation of a number of board members, according to the Irish Times.
Four board members of the National Concert Hall (NCH) have resigned in part, according to Michael Dervan at the Irish Times, because of a link up with the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York and a fundraising plan that was said to cost “large sums of money” without a guaranteed return, according to the Irish Times.
The reports of a board split come at the same time as an announcement that the NCH is to become a statutory body which will “enhance capacity to engage in fundraising,” according to Irish Arts minister, Jimmy Deenihan.
“As a statutory body, the National Concert Hall will have enhanced capacity to engage in fundraising,” Mr Deenihan said.
“This again is common to other national cultural institutions which are already established as statutory bodies and which have strong fundraising programmes,” he added.
In Dervan’s article, he added that there are those in the arts community who were “sounding warning notes” that Raise, the Arts Council’s scheme to support private fundraising in the arts, is not working. He noted that the US model of philanthropy was often cited but that philanthropy in Ireland was different, “otherwise the arts would have been showered with private money during the years of the boom”.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.