The Art Gallery of Hamilton (AGH) plays a major role in its community, which means establishing strong relationships with corporate sponsors both small and large who have a stake in the arts in Hamilton. I chatted with Cindy Carson, Director of Corporate Partnerships and Development for the AGH, to talk about corporate partnerships and meeting the person behind the brand.
 |
| The Art Gallery of Hamilton in downtown Hamilton. (Image.) |
The Art Gallery of Hamilton is obviously a very well-known gallery. How would you describe its mission?
The gallery is 105 years old now. We were founded in 1914, and our mandate has always been about the art. We expanded our mandate with our strategic planning over the last five years and going into the next five years, our four strategic priorities are: the art, community engagement, long-term sustainability, and learning through the art. Those are our four key priorities.
A big part of that, and in supporting all of that, is sponsorship.
Traditionally fundraising is done under the guise of donations. Donations and then you have sponsorships, which are two totally different pots, especially your corporate funders. You have your tried and true donors, who support the art gallery, who are largely individuals, through their memberships and then sometimes through donations as well on top of their memberships. I used to say we attract corporate sponsors through branding and alignment. When I meet with the corporate sponsor and I get to interact with a person one-on-one, at the heart of it, they are sponsoring the Art Gallery of Hamilton because they know it’s important to support the arts, period. They aren’t sponsoring it so much because, I get my logo here and I get my logo there and this and this. Corporately, maybe they are. When you break it down and talk to an individual, they’re doing it for good, philanthropic reasons.
So there’s the brand, and the person behind the brand.
Right, absolutely. They have different motivations.
How do you develop those partnerships?
We’ve worked really hard and over a long period of time and we continue to work on developing sponsorship opportunities. There are some natural segues. Say for instance, there’s our film program. Who’s going to be a natural fit for our film program? You’re going to look at your Rogers Media, Bell Media, Cogeco, all of those sponsors to support your film program because there’s just a natural tie-in. But the other side of that coin is BMO Bank of Montreal is our major film sponsor, and the Insight Foundation has always been a big film sponsor of ours too, so areas where we thought should tie in to film don’t really. However, there’s lots of exposure with our film program. BMO does have a fair bit of corporate presence there.
So you try to predict it, but…
Yeah. So when we do a local Hamilton exhibition, I tend to go to the local businesspeople. And you are looking at smaller sponsorship dollars there, but they’re very tied to that because they’re proud Hamilton supporters, and you can see that.
 |
| Part of Cindy’s job is finding local Hamilton businesses to partner with, specifically for exhibitions and programming that features or benefits Hamilton. (Source.) |
What do you look for in a sponsorship partner or a corporate partner?
Well, the financial dollars are certainly important. My goal is to try to round out our financial well-being. Half of my role is commercial revenue, and the other half of my role is philanthropic development, fundraising, corporate sponsorship and development.
So you’re working with both pools.
Yeah, so say we have a client who holds an event here. Say, it’s a large bank. It gives me the great opportunity to call them up after the event to say, “Hey, I know you guys had your corporate mixer here. Did you know we have this exhibition going on? It ties in well with your values. If you want to learn more about sponsorship let’s go out for coffee.” That’s a great avenue for me to go down that road.
Is the approach very different between the corporate side and the more donations-based side?
Totally. So we do a direct mail appeal once a year, but I’m trying to do it at least twice a year now. We find the part that really resonates with the individuals is we pull out the programming, the education value of an art institution, the value we bring to kids, and to the school system. So we will create a direct mail appeal to ask individuals to support the AGH’s educational programs, and that really resonates with individuals. It’s not as though I can compete in a really strong way with healthcare in my own backyard and say, “We really need your help to buy this piece of art,” the urgency isn’t there when I’m saying, “This kid has cancer over here, but we really need to buy this piece of art, so you, Joe Individual, support this artwork versus that.” It’s a really, really careful ask. So you do have to make it more about what’s in it for the whole community, what’s really going to be an emotive way, that’s going to stir people to actually break out their checkbook, open it up, pop it in the mail, and go through that whole psychology of giving to something that has meaning for them.
It can be very difficult to get the public to support ongoing operations. They like to be able to say, “This is a project, I did that, I helped fund that program, I did this or bought that thing.” Is it easier with corporate sponsors?
In some regards. When they have their corporate hat on they like to be able to say, “We own this,” and their logo can be on all of that. But again, when you get back to the person, they’re like, “Oh as long as it’s going toward something good.” It always comes back to an individual. So you’ve got certain avenues, like literacy. Everybody knows TD’s big stronghold is literacy and the environment. So when we’re rolling out an authors series or a reading and literature series, the first thing I’m thinking of is TD.
I’ve never thought of corporate relationships with institutions as being very personal. I’ve always thought of them on a business level.
We’ve been very fortunate, because the individuals I work with who represent those corporate entities, we’ve really been able to cultivate good strong relationships with them. They’re people I feel I can pick up the phone and just have a coffee with them for no reason at all, and it’s not about, “Oh I have to check in with that person every four months,” it’s because I feel like we’ve actually developed a very good friendship. I think it’s all about relationship building ultimately. Sponsors with their corporate hat on, want to know that they’re supporting an institution that’s in good standing, t respected, is a leader, and that’s trying new and innovative things. We don’t always do everything perfectly, but they have faith and confidence in us that we’re going to get there and that we’re going to keep striving and that we’re doing a good job, as best a job as anybody else in the museum and art gallery business can go.
What is the most exciting thing that’s been achieved here at the AGH through sponsorship since you started here?
Thank goodness it’s happened, our biggest achievement, was the launch of our new website. We so desperately needed a new website. Our older one couldn’t even take donations online. It has made a world of difference for us. That has been probably the most important change for us, institutionally. It certainly impacts our exhibitions attendance, all of our programming, our retail shop, and our wedding and events services. People are tied to a website, and rightfully so. That has been such an important thing. We do all our tickets online now, which is something we didn’t do three years ago.
Check out these current and upcoming exhibitions and classes at the Art Gallery of Hamilton: My Back Pages: The Art of Zines and Indie Publishing, The Collection Continues: A Quarter Century of Collecting, Adult Studio Class: Intro to Stone Carving, Adult Studio Class: Altered Books.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.