Insegnamento a.a. 2026-2027

The course is structured around the so called 3G revenue sources which affect cultural nonprofit sustainability.

1. Generated revenues

This section focuses on the income that cultural nonprofit organizations are able to generate through their own activities and assets. Students examine the role of box office revenues, ticket pricing, audience development, and participation strategies. The course also considers additional commercial and quasi-commercial sources, such as sponsorships, copyrights, streaming, rentals, food and beverage, merchandising, parking, and the use of organizational spaces. The objective is to understand how generated revenues can support financial sustainability without undermining the cultural mission of the organization. Students will reflect on the opportunities and tensions connected to market-oriented activities, including questions of accessibility, pricing, audience inclusion, artistic autonomy, and the balance between earned income and public purpose.

2.  Gifts

This section introduces fundraising as a strategic and relational process. Students study how cultural nonprofits identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward donors, moving beyond a purely transactional understanding of giving. Topics include annual giving programmes, membership schemes, friends’ associations, individual donations, major gifts, donor-advised funds, legacies, and capital campaigns. The section also examines why individuals give to culture and how cultural organizations build long-term relationships with supporters. Students will learn how to segment donors, construct a gift pyramid, define fundraising targets, and design communication strategies that connect philanthropic motivations with the organization’s mission and public value.

3. Grants

This section addresses grants as a key source of support for cultural nonprofit organizations. Students analyse grants from philanthropic foundations, corporate foundations, banking foundations, and public funding bodies. The course examines how grant-making priorities are defined, how cultural nonprofits respond to calls and funding programmes, and how grants shape organizational strategies, accountability requirements, and project design. This section also introduces students to the policy implications of grant funding, including issues of legitimacy, equity, dependence, evaluation, and impact.

• Recignize the relationship between public policy and cultural philanthropy, recognizing that public value in culture is produced not only by governments and public institutions, but also by cultural nonprofit organizations, donors, foundations, corporations, and communities.
• Explain the role of cultural nonprofit organizations within the cultural policy ecosystem, including their relationships with public authorities, private funders, audiences, corporate partners, philanthropic foundations, and civic stakeholders.
• Identify and distinguish the main funding sources available to cultural nonprofits, using the framework of the 3Gs: generated revenues, gifts, and grants.
• Critically understand cultural philanthropy in the cultural sector, including its contribution to public value, its strategic relevance for firms, and its ethical, governance, and accountability implications.

• Analyze the funding model of a cultural nonprofit organization, identifying the relative role of generated revenues, gifts, and grants in supporting financial sustainability.
• Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of different revenue strategies, considering their implications for mission coherence, accessibility, audience inclusion, artistic autonomy, and public value creation.
• Choose appropriate funding tools and approaches for different organizational objectives, distinguishing between generated revenues, gifts, and grants.
• Use fundraising tools such as donor segmentation, gift pyramids, membership models, campaign planning, donor cultivation, and stewardship.
• Design a coherent fundraising or resource-development strategy that combines generated revenues, gifts, and grants in line with the organization’s mission, context, and public purpose.
• Prepare and present a project proposal for a real cultural nonprofit context, communicating its strategic value to nonprofit managers, public policy actors, corporate partners, and philanthropic funders.

• Lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Company visits
• Practical Exercises
• Collaborative Works / Assignments

Lectures
Lectures introduce the main concepts of public policy, cultural philanthropy, corporate giving, and cultural nonprofit management. They provide the analytical framework for understanding the 3Gs of sustainability: generated revenues, gifts, and grants.

Guest Speaker Talks

Guest speakers will include policy makers, foundation program officers, corporate sponsorship managers, successful arts fundraisers, and cultural organization leaders. Each speaker will deliver a  presentation followed by Q&A, focusing on real-world challenges and current trends in their field. Students will prepare targeted questions in advance and will be invited to follow-up reflection posts analyzing how the speaker's insights connect to course concepts and their career aspirations.

Company Visits
Company visits expose students to real cultural nonprofit contexts. They help students understand organizational missions, funding challenges, stakeholder relationships, and the practical conditions of cultural management. Students will prepare targeted questions in advance and will be invited to follow-up reflection posts analyzing how the company visits iconnect to course concepts and their career aspirations.

Practical Exercises

Students engage in hands-on simulations and skill-building activities that mirror professional scenarios. Fundraising exercises include designing solicitation materials for different donor segments, and conducting mock donor meetings with role-playing scenarios. These exercises emphasize practical application of theoretical concepts while building professional communication and analytical skills essential for arts management careers.

Collaborative assignments

Collaborative assignments support the development of the field project. Students work in groups to analyze a cultural nonprofit organization, identify funding opportunities, and prepare a project proposal connecting public value, philanthropy, and sustainability.

With the purpose of measuring the acquisition of the above-mentioned learning outcomes, attending students’ assessment is based on two main components:

1. Two midterms  (20 points of the final grade) aiming at checking the understanding of the topics discussed in Section 1 and 2 of the course.
2. Group project presentations (10 points of the final grade) aimed to test the students’ ability to apply knowledge accrued during Section 2 of the course.
3. Participation: extraordinary in class participation and fullfilment of assignments might be rewarded with max 2 extra points.
4. Peer evaluation: free riding during collaborative project work might be penalized with max 2 point penalties 

Students’ assessment will be based on a written exam to assess students’ understanding of the topics discussed in the readings. The exam format will be a multiple choice test  + some open questions (90 minutes) and you should come prepared ONLY on the readings material for non attending students.

• Slides and Class Notes 
• Pecoraro F., Turrini, A., Volpe, M. (2023) Fundraising for the Arts, Bocconi University Press (selected chapters)

• Pecoraro F., Turrini, A., Volpe, M. (2023) Fundraising for the Arts, Bocconi University Press (ALL)
• Reich, R. (2018). Just giving: Why philanthropy is failing democracy and how it can do better. Princeton University Press. (ALL)