CIDACo’s Creative Capital – the time is now

Last week we welcomed in the launch of Creative Capital – a new Arts Council funded initiative from Yorkshire based consultancy CidaCo who specialise in creativity, innovation and enterprise. The Creative Capital programme is designed to boost the Northern region’s creative sector, as arts organisations across Yorkshire and the surrounding areas experience budget cuts and the need to develop new revenue sources.

Creative Capital was launched on Wednesday 10 April in Sheffield’s Cutler’s Hall a magnificent place that has been around since the 1700′s and contains many a grand room with tall ceilings and a need for sound systems for us mere mortals. Next year they will be celebrating 150 years of Sheffield Steel so the place is looking pretty smart, even the teaspoons used for our teas and coffees were of a higher standard than your average in-house caterers. Very impressive.

In the last week or so I have had a few emails from the CIDACo team to say that the numbers of attendees is going up and up so whilst I am not worrying about being heard at the back I am wondering if we will all fit in such a grand room.

MyCake were invited to talk about how an organisations’s data is useful in the process of change.

Our message is one of building collective intelligence in the sector rather than struggling in isolation. We are incredibly keen for arts organisations to open up more about sharing data and learning from a bigger source of knowledge, not just sharing best practice any longer but gaining powerful insights into where business models have to change and adapt or else pull an institution under. You can see an outline of what Sarah spoke about in the presentation slides on How pooling your data can improve your business model.

The challenge of these sorts of very short sessions (I had a mere 15 minutes) is of course one of engagement … Getting the audience to a point where they understand what ball park we are in intellectually is one thing. Getting them fired up about actually doing benchmarking themselves is another. So the tweak for this session was to take all the public financial data I can find on the invitees and use it to see and show how similar to or different from the national average this group are.

By the time we reach the round table discussions it is clear this approach has really worked as the questions are coming thick and fast …. What benchmarking is included in the programme? How do we get started? What data can we use? What do you think about social impact data? Every one of the six tables comes at the data question from a different angle. This is one highly engaged group of organisations

Perhaps it is that the timing is right for this programme, perhaps the risk of other funders ‘doing a Newcastle’ has really hit home, perhaps it is the energy that Anamaria and her team bring to the topic, perhaps it is the bespoke nature of the support being offered, and the quality of the team CIDA is fielding. Whatever it is this is going to be a programme which can deliver change in both the practice and the performance of the organisations who participate. Data is part of the approach of course as it helps with both diagnostic and goal setting and the interest in social impact data (there are those in the room such as Hoot who have already been working with this framework for a while) should help this group not simply benefit from what’s been done already but add to the body of knowledge on how to use data in the arts better.

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Upcoming event: creative Europe in a time of austerity

UK / European conference – Thursday 9 May 2013

Conference website: http://www.euclid.info/events/

Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, UK

In a time of financial austerity in the UK and across the rest of Europe, this event aims to provide arts and cultural organisations with a range of ideas to help them decrease their reliance on public subsidy by offering examples of initiatives, strategies, collaborative opportunities and alliances. MyCake founder Sarah Thelwall will be presenting at the conference.

The event will provide attendees with a selection of possible solutions and opportunities offered to the conference by a programme of 15 speakers, including Sarah, over three main sessions, followed by a round table session where delegates can meet in small groups with each of the speakers. 

Sometimes contradictory, and often controversial, these presentations will reflect on practitioner’s own experiences.

Early bird registration is open until 31 March 2013.

Registration and tickets for the event: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5433876872?ref=ebtn#

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Alternative financing models: re.volution Hack Day 22 February

We are taking our Culture Benchmark data up to Edinburgh this month for Mission Models Money’s re.volution Hack Day event on Friday 22 February. Registration is open and it is free for MMM re.volution members to attend.

In attendance will be a whole host of arts and culture organisations with a desire to change their approach to financial models and revenue. We’re very much looking forward to helping them interrogate tough questions that all arts organisations should be asking this year. Strong data and strong leadership will be the order of the day. We’ll report back on our thoughts of the day soon.

“Here they talked of revolution, here it was they lit the flame.” Gotta love Les Mis! : )

Other articles about our work with Mission Models Money:

Building Collective Intelligence with the MMM re.volution programme

Fuelling collaborative working with creative organisations

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No pain no gain for Arts Council National Portfolio Organisations

The DCMS cuts to the arts budget over the next two years will be passed on to all Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations.

A reduction in funding of 1% in the year 2013/14 and 2% in the year 2014/15 will be issued across the board to enable Arts Council England to achieve the £11.6m reduction in spending required by the Government during the current 3-year spending budget. And worryingly further cuts may be announced during 2013 making the situation for the arts very challenging.

Read more at Arts Professional NPOs to share budget cut pain and The Stage coverage of further cuts

We are acutely aware that tools such as MyCake’s Culture Benchmark have the potential to change how arts and culture organisations approach their mission for overall sustainability. The benchmarking tools: Culture Benchmark and our free benchmark for regularly funded organisations allow culture professionals to look in detail at their organisation’s data across the board.

We also have a FREE Charity Benchmark tool for organisations to research current UK charity data held.

We know change can be difficult at the best of times but really it is now more vital than ever for organisation’s to call on their staff to lead the way. We are very happy to talk to organisations about how they can get started with benchmarking and make the most of their extensive data.

With support arts and culture organisations can very clearly demonstrate relevance to a variety of stakeholders and articulate the value of what they do.

We’re also working with the voluntary sector’s BIG Assist programme and hope to share learnings from our work on the blog soon…

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Are you looking to better understand your audiences?

Audience Focus is a new intelligence-sharing framework from The Audience Agency, funded by Arts Council England.

The programme has been designed so that the arts sector across England can collect, understand and use audience information from a single source online. The programme will be developed in close consultation with cultural organisations and sector bodies, and participants will have a great deal of input into the shape of the programme and its outputs.  The programme will be accessed through an online hub which will contain a range of resources and case studies, sector guides and benchmarks free and accessible to all, with a password protected area for individual organisations and clusters to access their reporting. Most cultural organisations can benefit, but Lottery rules mean that the basic programme is only free to Arts Council England, National Portfolio Organisations.

The aims of the programme are to:

The Audience Agency are inviting expressions of interest to organisations who would like to take part in the programme – there is a survey to complete here

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RFO Benchmark still free and back for seconds

One year on: MyCake’s secure and direct RFO Culture Benchmark remains a free tool for arts organisations

Yes that’s right – we offer the Arts Council England’s regularly funded arts organisations the ability to see how their annual data submission to ACE compares to that of their peer organisations instantly

Are you ready to benchmark your RFO data set now?  Get started by registering for free now

MyCake’s RFO benchmark is now in its second year – a bespoke Culture Benchmark tool launched in 2011 which continues to be a free product available to all participants of the 2011/12 annual Arts Council England (ACE) survey of Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs).  Those signed up to the free tool can enter ACE data from the last two years and compare annual performance online at the click of a button.

The RFO Culture Benchmark essentially reproduces the quantitative questions of ACE’s annual survey within an online benchmarking tool so organisations do not need to double up on data or create anything new.  The data is already there at your fingertips. Why not gain immediate value from inputting your data today?

New for this year’s RFO Benchmark activity MyCake are also developing regional clusters of RFO organisations interested in experimenting with their data in Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham and London. For more details on how to be a part of the regional clusters of RFO Benchmark organisations contact Lauren at press@mycake.org

Get started straight away and register for the RFO Benchmark here for free: https://www.primenumbers.co.uk/benchmark/register.asp?type=mycake

The RFO Benchmark allows RFOs to enter their data simply and easily and make direct relevant comparisons of their organisation to the results in the benchmark using a set of filters such as region, art form or organisations with a similar turnover. Our results allow you to compare on an individual organisation basis rather than looking at how your data contributes to the national statistics … we think this is useful on a day to day basis when working on your business plan, next year’s financial goals and for other in-house strategic work as well as for advocacy to stakeholders.

This is the first time RFOs have the ability to see how their ACE survey results compare to their peers.  Rather than waiting to receive survey results in the annual review meetings with Arts Council England in the last quarter of 2012, you will be able to take your own analysis from the Culture Benchmark into those meetings and debate the implications for your plans for the future.

Sarah Thelwall, founder of MyCake said “There is a wealth of information collected in the ACE RFO survey but until now there has not been an easy way to ask questions of the data. Here at MyCake we strongly believe in supporting arts organisations to use the data they generate through the preparation of financial accounts and answering sector surveys. We see little point in this data simply being prepared and fed to others but not used to support internal decision making processes. We are very pleased to be able to change that with the launch of the RFO Culture Benchmark.”

There are three key benefits for regularly funded organisations using the RFO Culture Benchmark in addition to the ACE’s own RFO survey. Firstly the speed with which results can be accessed – the results are available immediately the minimum data set volume has been met, rather than once all data has been received.  This should be in late July so that RFOs can make an initial benchmark of their survey answers within the Culture Benchmark before submitting the same data to ACE.

The second benefit is that contributors will be able to slice and dice the data as they see fit. The RFO Benchmark is a secure online data tool rather than a static excel spreadsheet, making analysis and comparison of the aggregated data more immediate and flexible. In particular it allows RFOs to ask questions of the data that matter to them by using various data filters with the function to apply multiple filters to certain data queries.  So, if an RFO wanted to make comparisons based on the makeup of the board or the diversity of its staff it could do this. We would like to also point out that your organisations data is confidential to you …. we don’t ever share individual data sets with your competitors or your funders!

Finally, making use of the RFO Benchmark has the ability to change the relationship between the RFO and its ACE officer. Instead of waiting to receive the survey results in the ACE annual review meeting, an RFO can review the benchmark before going into the meeting and will be in a position to participate in a rich discussion of the strengths and weaknesses as shown in the RFO survey results and benchmark. The benchmark is an excellent tool to prepare thoughts on the changes RFOs will be making.

MyCake recently delivered free half day workshops focusing on the Culture Benchmark in four UK cities – delegates were amazed and inspired after hearing Sarah talk about the benefits of this approach and seeing the benchmarking in action.

“I really enjoyed the session, I found it interesting, informative, engaging and extremely useful – and I don’t normally find data related sessions interesting!  Everybody should be doing it!” delegate at Manchester: Culture Benchmark session

Discussions will be continuing with all the organisations involved in the workshops and foundations will be laid for further collaborations in the future. If organisations are interested in being a part of these workshop groups in the future please contact sarah@mycake.org

Existing Culture Benchmark subscribers will have the RFO version automatically added to their subscription for free.

For analysis of the RFO Benchmark data 2010/11 see Looking at the RFO Benchmark data for 2011 on the MyCake blog.

Some of our cogitations and findings from last year’s RFO benchmark data included:

Small and medium sized RFO’s spend a greater proportion of their revenue on staff costs but given the average number of permanent staff per million of turnover is only 4 we suggest that this is to be expected as all staff are likely to have a delivery role in addition to any management role.

Donations are worth an average of 1% of total income. It is worth noting that the max is also 1%. Whilst a great deal of emphasis is being placed on private giving we would still question whether this is a substantial opportunity for small and medium sized organisations.

50% of responding organisations do have a Balance Sheet that sets out their Assets & Liabilities, 50% declined to answer this question

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London Culture Benchmark – 2 July

If you are a senior manager at a London or South East based non-profit arts and culture organisation why not start July off with our free half day workshop that delves into your organisation’s annual financial and management data. It promises to be the most fun you can have with your laptop open whilst being in professional mode.

“I really enjoyed the session, I found it interesting, informative, engaging and extremely useful – and I don’t normally find data related sessions interesting!  Everybody should be doing it!”

a delegate at the Manchester: Culture Benchmark session

We’ve so far been to Manchester and Birmingham spreading the good news about the benchmarking approach and how it can better inform and empower decision making in arts and culture organisations and we are going to be in Newcastle near the end of July but next Monday it is time to meet the London and South East based crowd. We know there are loads of you out there with your annual ACE-RFO data and other morsels of information just ripe for a bit of benchmarking.

If you can spare the time to come along to the workshop it will surely be an investment of your time well made.

Monday 2 July at the O2 workshop on Tottenham Court Road – register for your free place on eventbrite today

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Benchmarking avoidance tactic no 2 – we already know what our finances look like

As we talk to more and more organisations about benchmarking there are a few classic excuses that people give for not adding benchmarking to their to do list. Now don’t get me wrong I’m all in favour of being cautious about what else one chooses to take on but some of the reasons given just don’t stand up to scrutiny so we’re going do a series of posts to to pop a few balloons. Of course if you disagree with us or think there’s something we’ve not considered then we’d love to hear from you.

The second reason given is really a misunderstanding of how benchmarking is useful. In order to benchmark you of course need to enter your own data into the system (it takes about an hour from scratch). One of the immediate pieces of feedback you get as you fill the form in is that it turns your figures in £ into percentages of income allocated to the various different income and expenditure lines on your profit and loss sheet. This is useful because it helps people to remember the ratios of the different income types.

It is however only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the Culture Benchmark (and also the Charity Benchmark and RFO Benchmark) offer indeed if this was all it did that wouldn’t be worth a lot because of course you do indeed already know what all your data looks like – where the income comes from, how far it goes in terms of the way you spend it.

Benchmarking expands your vision beyond your own data set. Instead of only being able to compare your data to your previous year or having to search out pieces of data from say the Charity Commission, the Culture Benchmark enables you to compare your business model anonymously and confidentially with other organisations like yours. This means that you can look at how the ‘best in class’ do things and use this to set new goals for your own organisation.

For example you might achieve say 5% of your income from trusts & foundations how do you know whether this is better or worse than others in your area of work. If you don’t know this then you might set a target of growing this to say 7% and be pleased when you achieve it. However if the average across your peer group is say 12% and they are aiming to grow to 15% this puts your figures into a very different context doesn’t it?

Alternatively you might be looking to reduce some of your costs and might be considering cutting your marketing spend from 3% of turnover to 2% (excluding marketing staff costs). However if the data shows that the organisations who achieve greatest ticket sales or audience figures are spending say 5% of turnover on marketing then you might think twice about it.

If you benchmark your organisation then not only can you see where your strengths and weaknesses lie but you will also have a much stronger set of messages to communicate to funders and other stakeholders about your successes. It is way more powerful to say that you are quantitatively best in class at A or B than to simply say that you’ve had a good year and A or B have increased/decreased as forecast.

As part of the MMM re.volution programme we’re able to give 50 re.volution peers a free six month subscription to the Culture Benchmark and this also comes with a degree of phone support and you’ll see us at MMM events so we can help you work out which clusters to join and what comparisons to make. For those who are paying subscribers we also offer a degree of support in working this stuff out, after all we want to make sure you get the most out of a subscription.

If you are a part of a non-profit arts organisation that wants to find out more about benchmarking your annual data then we are running free half day workshops in Birmingham on Tuesday 26 June sign up on eventbrite and in London on Monday 2 July also register for your free place on eventbrite.

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MyCake public appearances

There are quite a few inspiring and informative events happening this month for creative professionals where you can come and find MyCake’s founder Sarah Thelwall to hear her talk and have a chat.

Tuesday 26 June – 1pm – 5pm at School of Art, Margaret Street

Birmingham: Culture Benchmark workshop for West Midlands arts organisations. Free to attend.

To book visit the link below:

http://birminghamculturebenchmark.eventbrite.co.uk/

Thursday 28 June – The Design Trust business development day at New Designers

1.40pm – 2pm in the Business Design Centre Atrium

Getting started with money and finance – Talk by Sarah Thelwall of My Cake, the creative online accounting system

Tickets for the New Designers event are available here

Friday 29 June – Artsmart event at University of the Arts London

2 – 4pm

Sarah will be doing one-to-ones in the Ask the Experts section of the event with attendees who are looking to get ahead in the creative industries whilst being financially savvy.

To book to attend this event visit the UAL website here

Monday 2 July – 1pm – 5pm at O2 workshop Tottenham Court Road

London: Culture Benchmark workshop for South East based arts organisations. Free to attend.

To book visit the link below:

http://londonculturebenchmark.eventbrite.co.uk/

Saturday 7 July – Make It Pay at The Hub King’s Cross

10am – 4pm

Sarah will be delivering a workshop during this creative, inspiring and fun event hosted and developed by The Design Trust. Time TBC.

Money Management: How not to get stitched up with your finances where she will cover the basics of managing money in your business, how to get your finances organised and an introduction to the My Cake software and how its benchmarking tools can help you to set targets.

Sarah will also be available throughout the day for 1-2-1 advice around financial management and MyCake has a stand at the event so anyone is welcome to come along and say Hi!

To attend this event you can book your ticket on eventbrite or for further ticket information check the Make It Pay website.

It’s a busy next few weeks and whilst preparing to attend and deliver sessions at these events Sarah has also found time to write an article for the Guardian Culture Professionals Network blog – to be linked to here soon for your enjoyment!

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Culture Benchmark on tour

Culture Benchmark Workshop bookings open!

We’re hitting the road with our much loved approach to benchmarking for arts & culture organisations – check out the full tour dates and locations on our MyCake Culture Benchmark eventbrite registration page: http://mycakeculturebenchmark.eventbrite.co.uk/

We’re going to be delivering a series of free half day Culture Benchmark workshops from 1pm – 5pm in:

• Manchester – 19 June – MadLab -  book your free place on eventbrite here
• Newcastle – 21 June – Vane gallery – book your free place on eventbrite here
• Birmingham – 26 June – School of Art, Margaret Street –book your free place on eventbrite here
• London – 2 July – O2 workshop –book your free place on eventbrite here

We’re looking forward to getting out and meeting groups of organisations in each region that are on the frontline of all the recent changes to the arts & culture sector. We want to hear your questions and queries about benchmarking: have you tried it out yet?, what are the barriers to getting to grips with benchmarking in your organisation?, what data are you currently using to present to your stakeholders?

Let’s see what all this data can do for the wider picture of our organisations when we all meet up and data hack together.

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