Sarah Thelwall

MyCake

Sarah set up MyCake in 2007 to make data-informed decision making easier to implement in the arts & culture sector. The benchmark database now contains a headline financials on organisations which report to the Charity Commission (some 375,000 organisations), lists all non-profits which report to Companies House and matches these up against the data reported to 360Giving. This is in addition to containing highly detailed profit & loss & balance sheet data on several thousand non-profits. The benchmark approach has been extended in collaboration with Cause4 to cover the Arts Council NPO cohort. The output of this is the annual benchmark report & dashboard. COVID has led to MyCake developing tools which analyse the risk and resilience of non-profit business models and output these as a pair of risk & resilience ratings. MyCake’s analysis methods have been used by a number of national public bodies and private trusts & foundations as they develop and roll out various emergency grant funds.

14:40 - 15:20

Monday 10 May

How to use the Arts & Culture Benchmark to inform your work

This workshop is for arts and culture organisations who want to compare and contrast their current business model to those of their peers in order to find new opportunities for income development and cost management. We will also look at how we could redefine financial 'success' in the future to more thoroughly encompass ideas of financial resilience, balance, and health.