Arts giving circle launches

Businessman, investor, and Art Gallery of WA Foundation chair Paul Chamberlain has established a new collective giving group for the arts.

A long-time philanthropist and supporter of the arts, Mr Chamberlain is a founding member of Perth’s first giving circle, Impact 100 WA, which has provided more than $2 million since it was established in 2012.

Typically, giving circle members each donate $1,000 and vote on where the money is spent.

The idea for an arts-specific giving circle came after Mr Chamberlain became disheartened that the collaborative giving process tended to overlook arts projects.

He wanted to do something about the number of worthy ideas failing to attract funding.

“It’s very difficult for the arts to compete, and this is generally true, not just with Impact 100,” Mr Chamberlain told Business News.

“From a philanthropic perspective, if you are looking at kids with cancer or homeless people needing a shelter or some of those other more emotive things, it’s quite hard to appeal for funding for the arts.

“Impact 100 members who were engaged with the arts were a little disappointed that the arts never quite made it.”

Mr Chamberlain and fellow Impact 100 WA members who were passionate about the arts initially considered funding projects themselves.

“It got to a stage where we were like, ‘Why don’t we just do one [a giving circle] just for the arts?’,” he said.

He began having conversations in his network and teamed up with former Impact 100 WA founding committee member and Creative Partnerships Australia state manager WA, James Boyd, and Town Teams Movement co-founder Jimmy Murphy to establish the giving circle.

The new group, called Arts Impact WA, officially launched last night to give grants to grassroots and emerging artists.

Applications for the first year’s funding will open from December 1 and close mid-February.

The grants will be awarded in May 2022.

Arts Impact WA will work in a similar way to the giving circles already established in Perth.

People will donate $1,000 and vote on which arts project will be funded.

The committee has also secured 23 established philanthropists and foundations to give between $5,000 and $10,000 a year for the next three years, called Founding Champions.

They have collectively pledged $160,000 per year for the next three years.

“We tried to combine some of the better-known philanthropists and foundations with more grass roots level donors to support the arts at the lower to middle level,” Mr Chamberlain said.

Fundraising platform, the Australian Cultural Fund, will collect donations on behalf of the giving circle, meaning it can receive money from trusts and foundations and will have deductible gift recipient status.

Mr Chamberlain said the organisation was aiming to keep administration costs to a minimum.

A panel of 12, consisting of a chair, two Founding Champions representatives, two regular donors and seven people from the arts industry, will assess the applications to select finalists, who will participate in a pitch night to voters.

Mr Chamberlain said the initial application process had been modified so as not to place extra burden on smaller arts organisations.

Applicants are required to fill out a small form and are contacted if they are being seriously considered to present on the pitch night.

The grants are for small-to-medium arts organisations with turnover of less than $3 million.

Mr Chamberlain said the group wanted to have an impact and help projects that would not normally receive funding.

“[We will support] more community-based arts, more of those organisations to which money doesn’t flow [from] the government easily,” he said.

Mr Chamberlain said the giving circle would be able to take risks and back smaller projects the government could not.

Aside from targeting smaller projects, the panel would be looking for excellence and impact, Mr Chamberlain said.

“They will be looking for competence, previous experience, so that it can give you confidence that you’re giving money to the right people,” he said.

Support

Mr Chamberlain said the idea of an arts giving circle had been well received.

Initial interest and support from the Founding Champions means the giving circle is not far off Mr Chamberlain’s goal of providing three $100,000 grants in its first year.

This would make the giving circle the second largest in Perth, behind Impact 100 WA.

This year, Impact 100 WA has donated $340,000 to five organisations, 100 Women has provided $116,000 to three charities, and Meridian Global Foundation committed $50,000 to three not for profits (and invested $106,000 with the aim of giving away $1 million a year in the future).

“In all honesty, we are really quite encouraged,” Mr Chamberlain said.

“We are probably about three times where I thought we would be.”

He said there was a timeliness to the launch of the giving circle, after the lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic had highlighted the importance of the industry.

Mr Chamberlain said one of his hopes for the project, the reason he bought on Mr Murphy from the Town Teams Movement, was to get younger people involved with the concept of philanthropy.

“One of my key hopes for this initiative is we bring the next generation of, not only arts funders, but philanthropists generally,” he said.

“A thousand dollars is not an insignificant amount of money for most people but by combining yours with other people’s, $1,000 has a major impact on some of these community organisations.”