The Pitch: Why do businesses support the arts?

Americans for the Arts recently released a report on how and why businesses support the arts.

Some telling data points:

• Only 1/8 of businesses who supported the arts thought supporting the arts would help them achieve their business goals.
• Barely more than one-quarter of the businesses thought that the arts were an economic generator.

We all have some dusty figure about how the arts create jobs and the increased dollar-velocity in our communities driven by arts activities. Maybe those numbers are true, but to the businesses who might support you, that information isn't salient.

The top three reasons businesses support the arts are:

1. Improved quality of life in the community (I can support this anecdotally).
2. The arts create a vibrant community and society (are these actually different profiles?)
3. Arts organizations offer educations initiatives that benefit the community.

Community benefit, community vibrancy, community education. If you're going to a business asking them to support you, don't try to explain how you align with their mission, create jobs, or help them move product. Chances are, you're wrong anyway.

The businesses who support the arts are actually making a better case for intrinsic value than we're making about our own work.

Instead, explain to the business how your organization or project makes the community vibrant, improves the lives of their customers and employees, and will, ergo, attract more commerce to the area simply because it is a vibrant, value-laden community in which to live, work, and do business. Demonstrate results to them that definitively identify what it is your group has done and will do to deliver the three things businesses find most valuable.

Finally, think local. 96% of the monetary support given to arts groups was given by local businesses.