K2SP 3925 - Fundraising & Management of the Cultural Sector

This course gives students the theoretical and practical fundamentals of fundraising in the

cultural sector, equipping them with the strategies, methods and best practices used by

cultural organizations to mobilize resources. From the contemporary philanthropic

landscape to the psychology of individual and institutional giving, students become

familiar with the full toolkit of the profession: annual giving, major gifts, corporate and

foundation fundraising, special events, capital campaigns and endowments, public/private

partnerships, digital fundraising, stewardship, and the role of boards and volunteers.

The course is deliberately comparative. Cultural organizations operate within very different

financing systems, and the same technique behaves differently across systems and

countries. The semester is therefore anchored in three reference models — the American

private/tax-incentivized model, the French and Continental state-led model (with mécénat

layered on through the loi Aillagon of 2003), and the British arm’s-length “mixed economy”

model — and revisit them week after week, with a recurring eye to giving beyond the Global

North. As public funding tightens across Europe, fundraising has become a strategic

necessity, and the field has professionalized into a discipline with a tested body of

technique.What this course is not: it is not a general arts-management or cultural-policy

course, nor an accounting or financial-management course. The focus is the practice and

theory of raising contributed income for cultural institutions.

At the end of this course, students will be able to :

Manage a fundraising operation end to end — case for support, prospect pipeline,

gift tables, timelines and budgets;

● Explain what motivates individuals, foundations and corporations to give, and how

those motivations differ across the US, France and the UK;

● Distinguish the two core motions of fundraising — deepening relationships with

existing donors (the CRM) versus acquiring and cultivating new donors;

● Research, identify and approach funding sources, including private and family

foundations, corporate foundations and corporate sponsors;

● Build and defend a fundraising budget and measure success and impact with

appropriate metrics;

● Apply accountability and ethics, including gift-acceptance policy and the handling of

tainted money and donors;

● Leverage boards and volunteers to grow support, including the individual “ask.”

Each two-hour session opens with a short student-led press review (current developments

in cultural-sector fundraising and philanthropy). A one-hour lecture, illustrated with data

and comparative case studies, follows. The second hour is devoted either to a guest

speaker — directors of cultural organizations, professional fundraisers, foundation staff

and board members — or to a hands-on in-class assignment, role-play or small-group

activity. Across the semester, students develop a running “fundraising portfolio” — a

complete mini-fundraising plan for a chosen cultural organization — built one element at a

time.

Students are assessed through a composite of individual and group work:

● Participation & in-class assignments — 10% (individual);

● Press review — 10% (in pairs, scheduled across the term);

● Group fundraising plan / portfolio — 30% (teams of 4–5);

● Group final presentation — 20% (final session);

● Individual final paper — 30% (a comparative critical essay, c. 2,500 words).

Individual accountability & feedback: the individual final paper guarantees an individual

assessment; a confidential intra-team peer evaluation is applied as a modifier to the group

grade. Feedback on group work and the press review is provided during the semester,

before the final deliverables.

Before each session, students complete the assigned readings (typically one to two book

chapters or articles, plus a short data brief). Students maintain their running fundraising

portfolio and prepare a press review when scheduled.