As public funding gradually shrinks, many cultural institutions are looking for new models to secure their development. Patronage now appears as a strategic lever, not only to diversify revenue but also to strengthen the bond with audiences.
To understand the stakes of cultural fundraising better, we spoke with Anna Cattaneo, a consultant specialising in patronage and digital transformation. She explains why fundraising is not simply a search for money but, above all, a way of building lasting relationships with visitors, members and patrons.
🔹 Patronage is a strategic lever for transformation, not an emergency measure.
🔹 Fundraising rests above all on the quality of relationships.
🔹 Data and CRM tools play a central part in identifying future patrons.
🔹 Visitors, members and donors represent different levels of commitment.
🔹 Any cultural organisation can develop a patronage strategy.
Iris : Hello Anna, would you like to introduce yourself?
Anna : My name is Anna Cattaneo, I am 41 and I am speaking to you from Turin. I trained in communication and began my career as a journalist.
I moved towards project design and fundraising out of passion. I started as a volunteer in a small cultural cooperative, then took a master's in fundraising in 2016. That is when I began working in the field.
Today I work on fundraising, project writing and, more recently, digitalisation consulting. I have specialised in fundraising « onboarding »: I support organisations that have never raised funds in getting started, helping them turn their relationships, their audiences and their content into a sustainable system.
Iris : In your view, what part does fundraising play in the cultural sector when government support may fall short?
Anna : In Italy, fundraising is still little known. The cultural sector is unfortunately discovering it because public funding is gradually drying up.
Fundraising is a tool that supports freedom of decision, reducing dependence on public money and therefore on imposed projects. It can help museums, cultural institutions, festivals and libraries become stronger, more independent and more relevant.
Fundraising is also a strategic lever for diversifying revenue, mobilising your community and supporting innovation. For museums in particular, it builds a relationship with the visitor and creates a gradual journey. The visitor moves from being a mere « spectator » to a more central participant who shares interests and values, and in some cases becomes an ambassador.
It is not a rescue tool, then, but a lever of transformation that lets you be more proactive and more responsive to risks such as the withdrawal of public funds or a shift in their priorities.
Iris : In Italian, the English word « fundraising » is used to talk about patronage. Why? Can we not simply say collecting money?
Anna : We use the word « fundraising » because the literal Italian translation, « collecting funds », is too narrow. It refers only to money, whereas we as professionals know that « to raise and to fund » covers something far more complex: contributions can also take the form of skills, time or networks.
The term « sponsorship », also used, refers to a more formalised kind of support. It implies a contract between two parties setting out each one's responsibilities. In the case of a gift, we speak of « unrestricted donations », where the donor may even choose to remain anonymous.
What matters most in fundraising is building a relationship with a person or a company, in order to create initiatives together.
Iris : I like the idea of seeing fundraising as a process of building together. So what is the difference between a museum subscriber, a member and a donor? Are they treated differently?
Anna : Yes, of course.
Subscribers are people who buy a cultural experience, without necessarily looking to get more involved in the life of the institution. You can contact them before or after their visit to send information, questionnaires or news about activities, but always for marketing or service purposes.
Members are visitors who receive certain benefits depending on their commitment, and who may eventually become patrons. Some museums develop membership programmes for younger people, for instance, and through gamification build a relationship with future donors.
Donors, finally, are people who give without expecting anything directly in return.
Iris : We have mentioned museums, but what kinds of cultural institution in general can turn to fundraising?
Anna : Contrary to what many believe, everyone can: art, music, dance or the performing arts. I have worked on fundraising for shrines and heritage sites run by church organisations.
When I build fundraising work with an organisation that has never done it, I try to assess two things. First, the level of internal motivation: a solid team driven by a desire to work together is essential, because fundraising is a marathon.
Second, the organisation has to play fair and be transparent about how donations are used. Donors need to feel involved. They are not cash machines.
Iris : Let us get to the most concrete part of fundraising: what are the first strategic steps to developing this work? What knowledge, skills or tools do you need?
Anna : The first strategic step is to define a « mission » and get it accepted across the organisation. That means involving accounting, administration, exhibition production, ticketing, the bookshop, communication, education. There is a whole job of mapping and organising processes, because fundraising touches and feeds a dialogue between every department.
Another very important part concerns everything to do with data: collecting it, normalising it, segmenting it and analysing it. That data lets the organisation make better-informed decisions.
A museum that collects and analyses its visitor data, for instance, can identify who comes, why, where they come from and how many times they visited during the year. It can then judge whether those people are likely to respond to a request for a donation.
Iris : Are you saying that a museum that does not use its visitor data is missing a source of revenue?
Anna : Exactly. Fundraising is one of the funding tools that rests on the relationship with the public and on sustaining it. If I do not know who is in front of me, I cannot understand what kind of relationship to create and maintain, or whether a donation is even possible.
If my public is very young — and we already see this with Generation Z — the tools for engaging them will have to differ from those for a more mature audience. They may have less capacity to give in money, but they are very keen to get involved in other ways: from activism to creating digital content.
Iris : What are the links between audience loyalty and fundraising?
Anna : Loyalty rests on creating a relationship, which fundraising then turns into support.
Marketing strategies built on data — CRM, automation, analysis — can move a visitor from a passive status to a more active one, through membership for instance, and eventually towards becoming an ambassador or an advocate.
The challenge is to personalise the relationship, because there is always a degree of searching for a more individual connection.
Iris : It is fascinating to think of the relationship with the public as a personal one. On that note, would you tell us about an experience that made you realise how powerful your work is?
Anna : In the cultural field, a fundraiser is really someone who, as in a game, has to connect the dots to see what shape will emerge. The power of relationships, of giving, can set off unpredictable results, for the better.
One example I often cite to convey that potential is a fundraising campaign I ran for a small shrine in the diocese of Alba, which wanted to invest in a new system for automating visits.
We discovered that the shrine was mentioned in Cesare Pavese's book « Paesi tuoi ». That is when I remembered there was a foundation devoted to the writer, which we then brought in as a patron. A fundraising event came out of it: a « white party » held in a magnificent residence made available by someone who had become enthusiastic about the project. During the evening a violinist played free of charge and we held an auction with two donated works.
People who care about art, culture and landscape gave their time and opened their address books to create an event of incredible beauty.
Iris : If you were speaking to a cultural organisation still hesitating to start fundraising, what would you say to convince them?
Anna : Fundraising is not simply asking for money. It is an investment in your independence and in building a community that will support you over time because it shares your values and wants to leave a mark of its own.
It does not distort the identity of a museum, a library, a cinema or a theatre. On the contrary, it strengthens it, because as we said earlier it begins with the work of understanding your own mission and your positioning, now and in the future.
It is a unifying force that opens many possibilities. So do not hesitate to invest, whether in preparation, in energy, in tools, and perhaps in support from someone experienced in the field.
Our thanks again to Anna Cattaneo for her time and for the richness of this conversation, which sheds very concrete light on the stakes and opportunities of fundraising today.
The interview with Anna Cattaneo brings out a reality that is often underestimated: fundraising does not begin at the moment a gift is made. It begins far earlier, at the first interaction between a cultural institution and its audiences.
To identify the most engaged visitors, understand their interests, personalise the relationship and support their growing commitment, cultural organisations need reliable, structured data to lean on.
That is precisely what a CRM is for: centralising audience knowledge, making segmentation easier, automating some loyalty work and offering a complete view of the journey that leads from visitor to member, and from member to patron.
To support that shift, we have developed a new Patronage module that lets cultural institutions manage all their fundraising within their CRM: tracking donors and prospects, interaction history, campaign management, audience segmentation and stewardship of relationships over time.
An approach fully in line with the vision Anna Cattaneo defends: making fundraising not a simple search for money but a strategy of lasting relationship with your community.