Reducing risky relationships: criteria for forming positive museum-corporate sponsorships

ABSTRACT

Since recent economic downturns have significantly reduced government funding for heritage institutions in the last decade, museum sponsorship has become of paramount importance. This decrease in public funding has challenged museums to diversify their income sources, implement creative fundraising initiatives, and create corporate partnerships to supplement lost income. As a result, museums also face challenges in obtaining mutually beneficial partnerships with corporations given their responsibility to the communities they represent, their stakeholders, and the general public, to remain unbiased and independent from external and internal censorship that is often associated with the for-profit sector. Is it possible then, for museums to create partnerships with corporate sponsors that are mutually beneficial without risking their integrity, and if so, how? Through an analysis of both successful and unsuccessful partnerships, this work argues that mutually beneficial museum corporate sponsorships are possible.

KEYWORDS:

• Funding
• fund raising
• corporate sponsor
• risk management
• for profit
• corporation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Jasmine Proteau is currently reading for her DPhil at the University of Oxford. She is examining the travel experiences and travel writing of British and North American women using guidebooks, including and especially those written by and for women. In her heritage and museum studies career, she has specialized in curation and collections management. She was announced as the winner of the CFUW Linda Souter Award in the Humanities.

Notes

1. Fake news (2017) is defined in the Collins Dictionary as ‘false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting’. See Titcomb and Carson (2017).

2. Internal censorship or ‘Organizational self-censorship is an internal pressure that stems from perceived pressures in external funding environments’. See Gray and Kendzia (2009).

3. The latter is notable for Michael Bloomberg's passionate anti-tobacco stance during his political career.