The funding conundrum: A self employed musicians' guide to fundraising

This article was originally published in our Spring 2023 issue. Click here to subscribe to our quarterly print magazine and be the first to read our September issue features.

Arts funding is a perennial topic of debate, with Arts Council England (ACE)’s decision to defund the English National Opera among the most recent controversies to hit the headlines. But behind the multi-millionpound figures are thousands of freelance musicians. I spoke to seasoned producers and first-time fundraisers to find out what musicians need to know to secure the financial backing to make dreams reality.

Operatic soprano Charlotte Hoather is a month away from the first performances of her children’s opera, Down the Rabbit Hole. She’s worked with a composer and a deaf actress to create the piece, which combines singing, British Sign Language and physical theatre.

Funding came from a range of sources – including ACE grants, crowdfunding, and business sponsorship – and took time and effort to secure. Finding support for the project became a second job Hoather needed to fit around being a working singer. ‘I was on tour with Scottish Opera, and rehearsals started at nine or ten. I made sure I set out two hours in the morning before rehearsals to write and research’, she said. ‘There’s so much competition – I certainly sent out many more applications than just the successful ones.’

A bunny hop to the top: Charlotte Hoather (right) raised funds singlehandedly for her children’s opera ©Nick Rutter 

Roz De Vile is chief executive of Music Masters, a charity promoting access to music education. She stresses that musicians seeking funding need to do their research.

‘When you’re writing these applications, it can be immensely time consuming to do it well. You should personalise to each organisation and check they will support what you’re asking for – look at what else they have supported’, says De Vile. 'Sometimes that’ll be in their financial reports on the Charity Commission website. Sometimes they’ll have that information on their own website – there’s no harm in getting in touch.’

Hoather agrees that the best way to start can be picking up the phone: ‘If you’re a performing musician, ask the companies you’ve worked for. I went to a lot of the companies that I’d performed with and said, "I’m trying to do this – at the moment it’s a big idea with a Las Vegas budget. How do I make that work, from your experience?"’

Artists seeking money need to know exactly what their costs are going to be, says Hoather. ‘Know all your facts and figures; research everyone’s fees’.

She also recommended watching out on social media for research and training opportunities. ‘Last year Manchester Collective ran a series of workshops aimed at helping young producers – they’re founded by musicians and they’ve been there.

‘Another organisation with its finger on the pulse is the Young Concert Artists’ Trust (YCAT). They often do sessions on fundraising. Usually they’re online, so it’s very accessible – no travel costs’.

YCAT has a range of online resources on fundraising and promotion and is currently planning a scheme where young fundraising professionals volunteer their time to offer free one-to-one support to freelance musicians.
For an artist with an all-consuming idea, used to practising alone for hours, the hardest part of the fundraising process can be to see the project from the eyes of funders and audiences. ‘The main thing is to use some kind of impact framework’, says De Vile. ‘What is it, why do you want to do it, what need is it meeting, what kind of inputs are needed?’

Funders want to know the potential end results of any project they support, too. ‘What are the outcomes for you, and for other people? Are you trying to develop a new approach? What does success look like and how is that going to be sustained? Run it through a process in that way rather than just saying “I need some money” – that’s always going to have more of a chance of success.’ De Vile also suggested looking at previous successful applications from others, if you can.

Grant-making bodies will make their criteria explicit, and Hoather stressed the importance of being specific about the needs you will be meeting. ‘We’re going to ten schools in Winsford in the northwest of England, where I grew up, because there’s not much going on. The Civic Hall has been demolished due to asbestos – the travelling theatre companies can’t get there anymore. Some of these children might not have seen a real-life instrument.’

The project will also run with schools in London that have a mixture of mainstream and deaf students. ‘I hid the fact that I’m deaf in my left ear for most of my training’, Hoather said. ‘I want the project to be as inclusive as possible’. Hoather is also dyslexic, and found valuable support from ACE. ‘Don’t be put off’, she said. ‘If you reach out and provide proof, you can get a writing adviser.’

De Vile’s decade of fundraising experience has shown her that inclusion and understanding of outcomes are almost always priorities for funders – whether they are awarding public funds or are businesses themselves – and that artists need to be able to clearly communicate their understanding of these areas.

This can be challenging for freelancers. Dr Angela Slater is a composer who in 2017 founded Illuminate Women’s 
Music, a project promoting the work of women composers and performers. She’s made over 30 applications to a range of organisations since then, receiving grants from funders including ACE, the Ambache Charitable Trust, Vaughan Williams Foundation and the Marchus Trust.

Slater is not a fan of recent changes to the ACE application process. ‘It’s no longer a viable funding route for a freelance musician’, she said. ‘I was promising all this stuff and it was never enough. It was as though I needed to be a large organisation, rather than just saying, “We want to do a music project for the sake of music.”’

When seeking sponsorship from local businesses or thinking of ways to attract crowdfunding donations, the ability to see the project from the point of view of potential funders is again vital. Andrew Summers has been chair of the Barnes Music Festival in West London since its first season ten years ago. The festival has had regular sponsorship from local estate agents and solicitors.

I created a sponsorship package with four different levels’, he says. ‘The positive for them is exposure of their brand – the people who are coming to classical music concerts are likely to be higher-earning individuals, more educated and more discriminating.’

Other fundraising models can include annual or seasonal schemes for friends and benefactors. Summers also found a ‘friends’ model brings both sustainability and a relationship with the community.

Hoather has used supermarket schemes that allow people to easily donate small amounts, and crowdfunding websites. She emphasises the importance of being specific, and again thinking about outcomes: ‘I’m doing a colouring book, which is a breakdown of the synopsis and
a comic strip to help build vocabulary.

The schools had said that was something that they wanted to improve – I thought about how I could use the school’s aim with the fundraising aim, because funders want to know that there’s going to be an impact’.

Most grant-makers specify that applicants must have secured other sources of funding but support in kind can also be valuable: ‘If someone’s going to lend you a venue, it shows other people are rating you and valuing you – that’s very important’, says De Vile.

Everyone I spoke to who had succeeded in financing their projects had done so by putting together a range of different funding. It’s important to stay flexible and be able to find workarounds: when Hoather found organisations that wouldn’t fund individuals, she worked with schools and PTAs who could apply.

For Slater, the trade-off to staying small and having to constantly re-apply for funds is being more agile than a larger organisation: ‘We get to decide what we do,’ she says.

There’s no escaping the need for musicians to learn and develop entirely new sets of non-musical skills; selling, marketing, writing, accounting and planning. Every freelancer with a string of funded projects behind them had to start somewhere and learn on the job.

‘It would be lovely to think that an orchestra was going to ring me every month to commission me’, said Slater. ‘But it’s just not going to happen. So make things happen for yourself rather than waiting for them to land at your door’.