From the AMPAG archive — restored from a 2012 release on AMPAG’s annual Tracking Survey of philanthropic giving to the major performing arts companies.
AMPAG’s annual Tracking Survey of philanthropic and corporate support for the major performing arts companies showed in 2012 that — for the first time in the survey’s history — private donations had overtaken corporate sponsorship as the largest single non-government revenue source for the sector. The survey found combined private giving of $58 million in 2011, against combined corporate sponsorship of $42 million; the same survey in 2007 had shown corporate sponsorship at $51 million against private giving of $32 million.
The shift was the structural outcome of three trends running together: corporate sponsorship had declined through the GFC and not fully recovered; the major companies had invested heavily in development teams and donor programmes through the late 2000s; and the federal Government’s 2011 reforms to private ancillary fund deductibility had increased the incentive for high-net-worth giving in the form of patronage trusts rather than direct corporate sponsorship.
What the data showed
The major beneficiaries of the shift in 2011–12 were the larger companies with established development infrastructure — Opera Australia, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and The Australian Ballet between them accounted for over half the combined private giving total. The state-based theatre and dance companies had smaller absolute giving levels but had grown private giving fastest in percentage terms over the five-year window. The smallest companies in the AMPAG cohort had grown private giving from a low base by close to 200 per cent over the five years, although the absolute amounts were still modest.
The release noted that the shift created both a strategic opportunity and a structural risk for the sector: an opportunity in that high-net-worth giving was less volatile in downturns than corporate sponsorship; a risk in that high-net-worth giving was more concentrated in a small number of donors and therefore more vulnerable to individual donor turnover.
Why this matters in the longer arc
The 2011–12 shift was the start of a sustained trend through the rest of the decade. By 2019 the AMPAG Tracking Survey showed private giving at three times the level of corporate sponsorship across the cohort — a structural transformation of the funding mix that paralleled the shift in the United States arts sector through the same period. The pandemic interrupted the trajectory in 2020–21 but the recovery period from 2022 onwards has restored the longer-run pattern.
Original release: AMPAG (2012), “Private donors leapfrog sponsors as major arts players”. Restored from the AMPAG site Wayback Machine archive.
