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Lesley Ramos, 36, an arts and charity adviser who helps people give effectively to cultural organisations, believes the arts in Britain are in crisis. Government support has been steadily declining for decades, and Britain's wealthy are notoriously bad at giving: the top 1% of earners give just 0.2% of their income to charity, and of British adults who give to charity each month, only 2-3% go to the arts.
“We definitely have a funding crisis and we need to do more. We need to better support not just institutions but artists and the entire arts ecosystem,” Ramos said.
I met her at a members' club in Mayfair to talk about her latest book. Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Takeis a roadmap for new philanthropists and organizations seeking private funding. The book explores what “good giving” means, including not placing too many restrictions on arts institutions on how they spend their donations and not asking for too much reporting on the impact of their funding, which is a time-waster for institutions with overstretched budgets.
It also examines a less scrutinized topic: best practice fundraising. Ramos writes that UK museums and galleries fail to build the right relationships with potential philanthropists and ask for funds too early and too often. They don't show sufficient gratitude to those who donate, and instead risk annoying them with constant requests for more donations. Museums and galleries are not doing a good job of expanding their donor base, relying instead on the same few generous supporters. Museums must remember that “no one is obliged to give,” Ramos says.
She's the perfect person to provide an overview of both sides of the philanthropy equation: born and raised in Caracas to a Venezuelan-Italian family, she moved to Italy to study art history at the University of Padua, then worked in the fundraising department of Venice's historic opera house, La Fenice. “That's when I realized that these great cultural institutions don't have magic funds that keep them operating. They have a whole infrastructure that works to make their institutions financially resilient, including development departments and people who support the arts,” she says.
After Venice, Ramos ran fundraising at the Royal Academy in London before leaving to start a business advising donors. Last year, he teamed up with New York partner Aurélie Cauchy to start a company called The Twentieth, which allows Ramos to expand his philanthropy consulting practice to both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.
Her timing is perfect: The museum industry's repudiation of the Sacklers, whose names figured in the halls of some of the most noble institutions before the opioid crisis, is increasing public scrutiny of donations to cultural organizations and risks causing wealthy people to stop giving to the arts altogether, Ramos warns. It's also created a “general anxiety” within the arts industry about where funding comes from and whether it's ethically sound, she adds.
The pandemic lockdown hit museums and galleries hard, exposing the structural flaws of their funding models. “Most of the institutions that rely primarily on ticket sales, restaurants and retail have been financially devastated, especially in the UK,” Ramos says. The lockdown revealed the dangers of relying too heavily on access to glitzy parties as an incentive to attract supporters. Between 2019 and 2022, the number of patrons at the V&A grew by 11%, while at the Royal Academy, where private funding is key because there is no government funding, it fell by 45% over the same period. This is because the former are better at attracting supporters who invest in the museum's core mission, Ramos says.
“Patronage programs that rely too heavily on access, exclusive events and networking opportunities attract people who may not have much loyalty to the organization,” she says, calling it a “highly problematic” strategy if you can't host lavish dinners.
Ramos believes finding committed donors who care about an organization's purpose is more important than the tax benefits offered for giving to charity. “Tax benefits do help, but what I've learned from the data and from my experience working with people is that tax benefits aren't always as important as people think.” More important, Ramos says, is a sense of civic duty, peer pressure and a desire for social status.
Meanwhile, according to arts advocacy group Americans for the Arts, private giving to the arts in the United States totaled nearly $22 billion in 2019, and while individual giving has remained stable at 2% of disposable income since 1980, arts philanthropy faces another existential challenge: the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history is currently underway as Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation (those born before 1946) inherit their fortunes. According to research by specialist consultancy Cerulli Associates, estimates of the total amount of wealth to be inherited over the next 20 years range from the $30 trillion cited in Ramos' book to a whopping $84 trillion.
But it's important to note that younger generations' philanthropic priorities are not the same as those of their elders: They're more focused on climate issues, social justice, and diversity and inclusion causes. Museums need to be mindful of philanthropists' changing priorities, but not abandon their foundational principles, Ramos says.
So what advice would she have for the British Museum, which last year announced it needed £1 billion to overhaul its ageing infrastructure? “That's a very optimistic target so I think now is the time to be honest. These museums look beautiful and seem to be doing very well. The public don't necessarily know the extent of their financial difficulties,” she says.
But transparency alone is not enough. “We also need to focus on arts education. Can we expect someone who has never been to a museum to magically show up in their 30s or 40s when they can afford to support the arts? People who go to museums usually had the opportunity to visit when they were growing up. If it's not ingrained in the culture, people are less likely to support the arts later in life. You can't create a culture of philanthropy out of thin air.”
“Philanthropy in the Arts: A Game of Give and Take” is published by Rand Humphreys.
