WHEN Keith Venning commenced at the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in 2000, the company was in financial trouble and corporate sponsorships weren't very common in WA.
WHEN Keith Venning commenced at the West Australian Symphony Orchestra in 2000, the company was in financial trouble and corporate sponsorships weren't very common in WA.
Eight years later, Mr Venning is retiring as chief executive officer after turning the company around and while the economic downturn is the next hurdle ahead, he believes WASO provides the right value to its business partners to retain financial support.
Since 2000, WASO has almost doubled its annual turnover to $16.5 million and quadrupled its ticket sales to $5.7 million a year.
Chaired by Janet Holmes à Court, WASO is also a major beneficiary of philanthropy and was recently awarded the Partnership of the Year Award for its successful partnership with Ernst & Young at the national AbaF awards.
It has about 100 corporate partners and Ernst & Young spent over $1 million in the 13 years of being involved with the company.
WASO was one of the first WA arts organisations to involve the business community in corporate partnerships.
"We intended to get money from corporate partnerships but it was something that hadn't been done largely by arts companies in WA," Mr Venning told WA Business News.
"The main hurdle was to convince the market place that there was value in investing in the arts," he said
"And once you start getting things moving...success brings success."
With more and more businesses getting involved in sponsoring WASO, Mr Venning said the company increased its offer and endeavoured to appeal to a larger market.
"Our strategy has been to very much lift the profile of the organisation to appeal to a much wider cross section of the market and build our corporate partnership and commensurate it to what we're doing," he said.
"One followed the other; we built the organisation up and lift the corporate dollars with it."
WASO also showed that an arts organisation and an oil and gas consortium could work well together, as it received a $1 million sponsorship from Australian LNG to tour Japan in May 2009.
"Japan fits in our business plan, because we want to be the pre eminent orchestra in the region and ...LNG said they would sponsor us for a tour in four cities in Japan which is also where the major buyers of oil and gas are," he said.
Mr Venning believes business and arts partnerships may experience some changes as a reult of the economic downturn.
"I think there will be some tightening of the belt, indications from some of our people that there will be a review of sponsorships going forward and a rationalisation of what companies can provide to sports and arts," he said.
"The outlook for us for 2009 is quite positive because all our partnerships are long term partnerships."
"The year to watch closely will be 2010 because it will rest on what happened in 2009 and how the market will react may affect our partnerships in 2010."
Mr Venning will be replaced by former WA Opera general manager Craig Whitehead.
