BASA’s arts sponsorship toolkit now customised

This follows a series of successful launch workshops to businesses in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth in April.

Presented by Michael Goldman, a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), the BASA arts sponsorship management toolkit gives South African businesses a way of navigating through a sponsorship cycle and, ultimately, the ability to measure the effectiveness of an arts sponsorship as a strategic part of any business.

The toolkit has been enthusiastically received by the South Africa business community, with Tim Roberts of Capvest Wealth Management saying, ‘I found the ideas Michael suggested very useful, and I look forward to using the workshop toolkit,” while Laurice Taitz of iSchool Africa described the workshop as “really useful”.

“What arose very clearly out of the workshops was the desire on the part of business and corporate sponsors for customised and in-depth sessions around the Toolkit,” says Goldman, who was the lead researcher in developing the toolkit with funding from Unesco and the National Lotteries Distribution Trust Fund. As one of the workshop participants, Absa’s Dawn Roland, put it: “It would be great if the toolkit can be tailored to meet the needs of specific requests in future.”

Stemming from this need, BASA is now offering tailormade consulting workshops for those businesses looking to review or enhance their involvement in the arts. These half- to full-day sessions will be designed with each participating business and will provide focused guidance on aspects of arts sponsorship strategy most relevant to the specific company taking part in the workshop.

Says Goldman: “By drawing on the exercises and approaches outlined in the toolkit, these sessions will provide a unique opportunity for a company's arts sponsorship team to assess the completeness and strength of their arts sponsorship strategy, as well as draw a more direct link between their investment in the arts and the desired returns for the business.”

The BASA arts sponsorship management toolkit emerged out of research commissioned by BASA into arts sponsorship management and investment measurement mechanisms. During the baseline research project, BASA members were interviewed and completed a survey which informed aspects of the toolkit. The BASA arts sponsorship management toolkit guides the sponsorship process from formation of objectives and measuring impact to selecting sponsorship properties, leveraging and managing sponsorship properties and much more.

The BASA arts sponsorship management toolkit is available online at basa.co.za as part of Business and Arts South Africa’s growing bank of digital resources. It will also be presented to the arts community via workshops in the coming months. The toolkit will allow arts organisations to favourably position themselves in terms business sponsorship objectives and management requirements as identified in the research of the toolkit.