{"id":1724,"date":"2014-12-05T08:04:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T16:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/?p=1724"},"modified":"2014-12-05T08:04:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-05T16:04:42","slug":"efficiency-in-fund-raising-a-technical-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/12\/efficiency-in-fund-raising-a-technical-note\/","title":{"rendered":"Efficiency in Fund Raising – A Technical Note"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"marginal\"<\/a>The National Center for Arts Research has released its report on The State of the Arts<\/a> – a compendium of data and what I call ‘kitchen sink’ regressions (i.e. looking for statistical relationships by including all data that might conceivably matter and seeing what comes out the other end, rather than generating the regressions through a more formal model of firm behavior. Not that there is anything wrong with that – I’ve done it myself in research papers).<\/p>\n

In their section on fundraising<\/a>, they find:<\/p>\n

The average organization brought in nearly $8 in contributed support for every dollar spent on fundraising. Fundraising expenses generated a similar level of total contributions over the years regardless of annual shifts in the mix of organizations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, should the average organization thus be spending more on fundraising, since the average payoff is $8 to $1? The answer is: we don’t know. Whether an arts organization should go and hire more development staff depends on the expected marginal<\/em> benefit: given the current level of activity, would the increase in fundraising from hiring one more staff cover the cost of that additional staff? The 8-to-1 ratio is the average<\/em> return to development expenses, but the law of diminishing returns holds in fund development as in most anything else – there is a finite pool of potential donors, with finite resources to give, and the low-hanging fruit will have already been added to the donors list. It might well be that additional expenses in the development office would not<\/em> generate a return that covers the cost.<\/p>\n

And as in fundraising, so in any other activity of the organization: marketing, for example. Ask: given what we are already doing<\/em>, would additional<\/em> expenditures yield benefits that exceed their costs? The ‘averages’, say total earned revenue divided by total marketing budget, won’t tell you that.<\/p>\n

Effective decision-making happens at the margin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Center for Arts Research has released its report on The State of the Arts – a compendium of data and what I call ‘kitchen sink’ regressions (i.e. looking for statistical relationships by including all data that might conceivably matter and seeing what comes out the other end, rather than generating the regressions through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1724","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dIW5-rO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2250,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2017\/11\/soft-power-and-the-arts-23\/","url_meta":{"origin":1724,"position":0},"title":"Soft power and the arts (2\/3)","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"November 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The British Council and the University of Edinburgh have teamed up to prepare an empirical analysis of the actual effects of soft power (my introduction on soft power and the arts is here). How does this work? The idea is to take measures of different assets of a country that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Recall","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/2015-Mercedes-Benz-E400-4MATIC-coupe-134-626x382.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/2015-Mercedes-Benz-E400-4MATIC-coupe-134-626x382.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/11\/2015-Mercedes-Benz-E400-4MATIC-coupe-134-626x382.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1162,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/03\/creativity-craft-and-the-quants\/","url_meta":{"origin":1724,"position":1},"title":"Creativity, Craft, and the Quants","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In the New York Times, Timothy Egan worries we stifle creativity in the search for expert quantitative analysis. He writes, in \"Creativity vs. Quants\": Here\u2019s how\u00a0John Lennon\u00a0wrote \u201cNowhere Man,\u201d as he recalled it in an interview that ran just before he was murdered in 1980: After working five hours trying\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"suppose we begin a cappella?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/lennon-rubber-soul.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1957,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2016\/01\/arts-funding-and-peer-review\/","url_meta":{"origin":1724,"position":2},"title":"Arts funding and peer review","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"January 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"At The Scotsman, Euan McColm writes about the controversy surrounding Creative Scotland's grant to artist Ellie Harrison, who will live in Glasgow for a year without leaving, in order to personally document what is known in social science as the 'Glasgow effect', whereby various measures of quality of life are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"this is starting to have an effect on me","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Merchant_City_Glasgow_016.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Merchant_City_Glasgow_016.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Merchant_City_Glasgow_016.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Merchant_City_Glasgow_016.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Merchant_City_Glasgow_016.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Merchant_City_Glasgow_016.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1119,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/03\/a-cautionary-note-on-the-social-and-economic-value-of-the-arts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1724,"position":3},"title":"A Cautionary Note on the Social and Economic Value of the Arts","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"March 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Arts Council England has released a new report on The Value of Arts and Culture to People and Society: An Evidence Review. What to make of it? From the foreword by the Chair of the Council, Sir Peter Bazalgette: Of course the inherent value of arts and culture is, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"think of the grandchildren","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/keynes4-300x290.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1796,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2015\/01\/new-research-from-the-nea\/","url_meta":{"origin":1724,"position":4},"title":"New research from the NEA","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"January 13, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"New research on arts participation and economics has been released by the National Endowment for the Arts. I won't try to summarize everything there, just a few comments: Two of the reports are on participation: one asks about who participates in what, the other asks people about why they participated.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"what are the data telling us?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/whirlwind-computer.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1357,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/2014\/06\/earmarked-taxes-for-the-arts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1724,"position":5},"title":"Earmarked taxes for the arts","author":"Michael Rushton","date":"June 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Last night Mecklenburg County (where Charlotte, NC is) commissioners voted to approve a referendum on increasing the sales tax by a quarter of a cent, some of which would be dedicated to culture: 7.5% of the proceeds to the Arts & Science Council and 5% of the proceeds to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "issues"","block_context":{"text":"issues","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/category\/issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"I admit only having been to the airport","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/charlotte-north-carolina.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/charlotte-north-carolina.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/charlotte-north-carolina.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1726,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1724\/revisions\/1726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/worth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}