By Peter Koven
Corporate sponsors say they want to contribute to Ottawa’s arts industry — but they expect the local government to support it as well.
When city councillors voted 20-2 against the proposed $1.7-million cuts to arts funding, they may have saved many of Ottawa’s most important cultural industries, because corporate sponsors were not about to increase their investment.
“Would we pick up the slack? The answer is no,” says Ruth Foster, associate director of corporate social responsibility with Bell Canada, which spends about $1 million annually in sponsorship of Opera Lyra and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
“We get 200 requests for support every month, so there’s a lot of pressure on our budget. We can’t afford it.”
While the city’s total investment in the arts, about $3.4 million annually, is extremely low compared with other Canadian cities, it may be the most significant type of funding that the arts receives, because it encourages other types of support, including sponsorship.
“The city funding is small but vital,” says Catherine O’Grady, executive producer of the Ottawa Jazz festival, which relies on sponsorship for 50 per cent of its funding, or about $1 million.
“The city spurs investment support from other levels of government — Heritage Canada and the Ontario Arts Council. And the lack of funding directly affects the amount of sponsorship dollars you can get,” she says.
Foster agrees.
“Municipal cuts have a terrible domino effect,” she says. “No corporation wants to be or can afford to be the sole supporter. If the municipal funding isn’t there, corporations interpret that as a negative.”
Peter Honeywell, executive director of the Council for the Arts in Ottawa, says that if corporate sponsors don’t see a commitment from the local government to promote the arts, they won’t see any reason to provide sponsorship dollars themselves.
“If a corporation sponsors you, they’re going to want to make sure that their dollar is well-handled,” he says. “If you don’t meet their criteria, they’re going to take their dollar elsewhere.”
It isn’t surprising, then, that sponsors were not pleased to learn about the proposed funding cuts.
“The corporations are phoning the (arts organizations) in Ottawa right now asking, ‘Where did you go wrong?’ That’s the perception out there,” Honeywell says.
From the corporate perspective, sponsorship brings certain benefits – for example, increased visibility and marketing returns by demonstrating that they’re “good corporate citizens.”
Sponsorship is often confused with donations or philanthropy but is actually very different from either one. It’s an investment, and corporations make it because they want to see it pay off.
To make sure this happens, they target very specific organizations that reflect their company values. This makes sponsorships extremely difficult to replace for arts organizations.
The Opera Lyra is a good example.
Its annual funding from the city is $140,000. From sponsorship, it receives more than $200,000, primarily from Alcan, Bell Canada, and Cadillac. In each case, these companies carefully selected the opera as a good investment based on its history and strong reputation in the Ottawa area. Replacing them would not be easy.
The Opera Lyra has a rigid cost structure because in the case of opera, performers and sets have to be booked literally years in advance.
As a result, losing funding from either source would cripple the organization. This is especially true now, since it is extremely difficult to draw new sponsors in the current Ottawa economic environment, which is still reeling from the collapse of the high-tech companies in 2000.
“The general sponsorship dollars are pretty much disappearing, partly because of the high-tech implosion,” says Gabriella Csoti, director of marketing and development with Opera Lyra. “It has to be a really good fit between the corporation and organization (to receive sponsorship).”
Meanwhile, the corporations are happy that the municipal cuts were averted, and that their sponsorship dollars aren’t going to waste.
In fact, they were among the first to rally against the cuts themselves. Executives from Alcatel, Telesat, Bell Canada, Mitel, and Telus jointly sent Mayor Bob Chiarelli a letter almost immediately after the cuts were proposed in which they said that “support for the arts is not simply a nice thing to do or the right thing to do. It is a smart thing to do.”
“You’d like to think the city sees the value of it as well,” Foster says.