30 August 2012

"Giving is not just for the wealthy, but something all can participate in"

Source: National Funding Scheme

United Kingdom is preparing the National Funding Scheme, an instrument that will allow visitors and supporters to directly fund art and cultural institutions. The scheme's aim is to raise new funds for the sector  through mass giving.

Through this system, visitors will be able to use their mobile phones during their visit and donate via SMS, dedicated smartphones’ applications and  Near Field Communication technology.

This simple, accessible and nationwide funding scheme will be able to introduce new donors to cultural institutions, providing them with a way to support the heritage they are visiting in the very moment of the visit. On one hand, this allow on one hand to use the high commitment and emotional participation of the visitors to support the conservation of the heritage; on the other hand, this mechanism is represents a way to build a new and concrete social community and create a closer link between donors and the cultural institutions.

Although crowdfunding systems are not new, this is the first time that such a system is employed to support the cultural heritage via the newest possibilities offered by the mobile technologies.

The National Funding Scheme was presented at the beginning of July 2012 by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, Olympics and Sports, MP Jeremy Hunt, in the culturally rich setting of London.

The National Funding Scheme is an important step towards a real and effective integration between users and institutions of cultural heritage. State of the art researches point out that something that shows what is being done with a donation will increase the people’s donations, and slightly less than the half of the interviewees declared themselves incouraged to donate to cultural institutions if provided with a flexible system to do sp.

The National Funding Scheme is due to be launched and fully implanted in spring 2013.

Author: Paula Simões

Source: http://www.nationalfundingscheme.org/