Funding

Findings and recommendations

The page is a prototype, showing the potential for a Data Observatory which hosts a rich set of validated information about organisations in the culture sector. There are limitations, not least of which is the limited number of organisations in the pilot, and the limited amount of data that they are providing.

Furthermore, the data quality of some sources (such as 360 Giving) has not been validated, and it is possible that organisations who formerly presented their data via 360 Giving have either stopped or are delayed submitting information.

Recommendations for future work include:

• developing the service design to enable more culture organisations to contribute income profiles and other funding-related data in a common format
• validation and exploration of data around funding, including detailed cross referencing different sources of information from e.g. 360 Giving, DCMS, Arts Council England
• encouragement of funders to publish high-quality, validated award data in a common format such as 360 Giving. The Data Observatory could provide a critical feedback loop in validating and enhancing quality of this data, as an active user of the data

Funding sources

Newcastle-based culture organisations receive funding from a wide variety of sources. This section presents funding sources that are available in the Data Observatory, derived from open data sources.

The data presented includes a wide variety of date ranges, as different funders provide information with different periods.

Please note, is currently excluded from this page, as it has proved challenging to correctly identify the grants or loans which relate to the scope of this data observatory. The summaries are also based on significant assumptions around categorisation of data. There may also be data missing from the sources, as the 360 Giving aggregates data from third parties, and may not hold or be presenting a complete set of data.

Sources of organisational income

We requested baseline data from culture organisations in Newcastle, including information about sources of their income.

The categories of income data we asked for included:

income from sales of tickets

donations from private individuals

donations from companies or other corporate bodies

income received from trusts or foundations, including legacies and private funding programmes

funding received from public bodies including Arts Council England and the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS)

Comparing this directly would be skewed by the large organisations, so the data is presented as a proportion of the total income. This enables a comparison of dependence on different types of funding. The organisations are ordered in decreasing proportion of earned income.

Even with a small set of data, it is possible to see a wide variance in funding models of the different organisations, with Centre for Life being almost 100% funded by earned income, whilst Seven Stories received in excess of 90% of its income from donations, grants and public funding.

With more data, it might be possible to cluster and analyse the groupings of organisations by reliance on certain types of funding source.

Organisation turnover by size of business

The derived Culture Sector dataset has allowed further analysis of the funding data. This analysis includes Arts Council England (Project Grants and Investment Programme) and data from 360 Giving and attempts to match to Companies House data, either by company number or by name if company number is not available.

Matching funding data with Companies House data may be unreliable. The data is aggregated by the declared accounts category, as defined in Companies House accounts definitions.

The graph below also suppresses figures below £500,000 resulting in organisations in Unaudited Abridged, Dormant, Small account categories being excluded from the chart. £166,000 of funding is currently not included.

After this matching, there are still a number of unmatched entities, probably charitable or public sector organisations. The unmatched funding totals £50.5M. The graph below also suppresses figures below £500,000, resulting in organisations in Unaudited Abridged, Dormant, Small account categories being excluded from the chart. This totals £166,000 of funding which is not included.

Limitations

This analysis is limited to a small number of organizations in the pilot and the data they provide.

Furthermore, the data quality of some sources, such as 360 Giving, has not been validated. It is possible that organisations who formerly presented their data via 360 Giving have either stopped or are delayed submitting information.

Future recommendations

• Develop a service to help more cultural organizations contribute funding data in a common format.
• Validate and cross-reference funding data from multiple sources.
• Encourage funders to publish high-quality data in a common format, with the Data Observatory providing feedback to enhance data quality.