Caroline McCormick, Director of cultural consultancy Achates explains how a purpose-led approach to income generation can benefit your organisation – and what she has learnt from the hit TV show Dragons’ Den.
As someone who has worked in the charity sector for most of my career, setting up a small business has been a learning curve, and so I completely understand why so many culture and heritage sector charities find the idea of setting up new earned income streams outside of the usual areas of tickets, retail, and food and beverage, not only daunting but often antithetical to their work and approach. I am fortunate in that 11 years later, the cultural sector consultancy company I founded, Achates, continues to thrive in the face of the ongoing challenges to the sector, but my team will always tell you that I have in fact learnt a lot of the basic principles we use every day from that TV favourite, Dragons’ Den. Yep, the one where entrepreneurs pitch their product and ask for investment from successful business people.
That’s because the principles that underpin most business and management approaches and the text books that saturate the market are all focused on one thing – a single bottom line of profit – and that doesn’t translate easily to cultural sector charities.
Cultural sector charities have what we call an Achates Triple Bottom Line© of the work created or curated, the impact created with and for priority audiences, and the money which enables the work and the impact with and for audiences. Dragons’ Den has taught me all sorts of things from keeping overheads down, to the difference between gross and net profit, but that alone probably wouldn’t have kept my attention, it is of course the human element which is compelling – all of the Dragons repeatedly say that they have to have a passion for the business before they will get involved and very often they roll up their sleeves because they have been touched by someone’s back story or the focus of the product itself.
One of the many things President Trump’s second term in the White House reveals is the danger that lies in a focus on the single bottom line in isolation with everything and everyone reduced to a commodity. The ‘assemblage’ approach taken by the Achates Triple Bottom Line is one in which a range of types of value are held in a dynamic harmony and is a way of moving beyond this problem. I would also suggest that it offers the way forward with cultural sector leaders and in particular creatives who whilst they may be able to see the financial imperative to lean into commercial income generation in the light of the context of ever declining state funding, rising costs and increasing competition for finite contributed income, still find it a challenging area to grapple with.
Once you can define your organisational purpose, that is to say the work, audiences and impact created, then you can also start to understand your organisational assets. And when you understand your assets then you can start to explore how to employ them in a way that not only drives income it also furthers that purpose, enabling resilience with integrity which of course is an approach which we all feel much more comfortable with.
We call this purpose-led approach to income generation, or as I like to think of it, the ‘Reverse Dragons’ Den’ – in which we identify the assets and then evolve the commercial offer from there. I firmly believe that every cultural sector charity has assets it can lever and monetise if we just create the space and time to understand and value them. Try it with your colleagues; you may be surprised what opportunities you find for your organisation and where they might take you!
Useful Links
- Achates is a leading cultural consultancy company supporting commercial and contributed income generation; impact measurement, evaluation, business planning and strategy at an organisational and policy level; leadership development, change management and recruitment.
- Achates offers the Reverse Dragons’ Den process as part of its income generation services, you can find out more here
- Our digital platform, Achates Community, offers 50+ Masterclasses on every aspect of running your cultural sector charity from a purpose-led perspective, including sessions on commercial income generation, and we’re pleased to offer Cultural Enterprises members a free one month trial here
