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Arts Minister Jimmy Deenihan today announced the introduction of a new philanthropic initiative – on a pilot basis – for arts and culture organisations.

The initiative – the Philanthropy Leverage Initiative – is designed to encourage philanthropic sponsorship and endowment funding of the arts from private sources. The initiative, established with funding of €230,000 for 2012, will be managed by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

It is envisaged that this funding will unlock new private sector funding of 2.5 times the State allocation of €230,000 generating total additional funding of €805,000 to the arts in 2012. The pilot initiative will be reviewed at the end of the year.

Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht – Jimmy Deenihan TD – commented:

While philanthropy in general is reasonably well developed in Ireland, this is not the case in the arts and culture sector. Philanthropy for arts and culture is underdeveloped in Ireland compared to other sectors and compared to other countries, particularly the United States.

Today’s obvious constraints on the taxpayer mean that we have to look for innovative ways to address funding issues. The philanthropy scheme announced today aims to incentivise private fundraising and offers more taxpayer funding to those organisations that can raise the most support from other sources. I hope that these initiatives will help to develop philanthropic giving to the arts in Ireland.

Applicants for funding will be able to apply to the Philanthropy Leverage Initiative for support in one of four categories, with each category targeting a different multiple of matching funding. An organisation can seek State funding of €5,000 if it can raise €10,000 from new philanthropy, sponsorship or endowment funding, a 2:1 ratio of private to taxpayer funding.

Funding under this initiative will be available to not-for-profit organisations for arts programming projects.

Please click

for Application Form.