Cultural institutions, events and projects are also financed by private households, the business community, foundations and other private non-profit organisations, in some areas to a considerable extent. Reliable statistics on private cultural funding are unfortunately not available in Germany. In its Kulturfinanzbericht 2020 the Federal Statistical Office provides an estimate for a small section of private cultural financing, namely private expenditure on publicly subsidised cultural institutions in 2017, which amounted to 1.2 billion EUR, or 15.05 EUR per capita. In 2016, the private sector contributed to a similar extent to the financing of public cultural institutions. At that time,direct revenues amounted to 1.3 euros and 15.15 euros per inhabitant. In addition, public and private cultural institutions generate income through patronage and sponsorship. They also benefit from voluntary civil society commitment, the value of which cannot be quantified. Furthermore, this estimate does not take into account cultural institutions that are financed entirely by private means (e.g. musical theatres, rock concerts, circuses and other cultural industry enterprises).
The study Unternehmerische Kulturförderung, published in autumn 2019 by the Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft in the BDI, offers an insight into corporate cultural promotion in Germany. The study, which is based on a survey of companies, nevertheless provides insights into the motivation for promoting culture, the cultural sectors supported, models and forms of cultural promotion and promotional instruments – although it also states that there is still no reliable database on the total amount of private expenditure on the promotion of art and culture in Germany.[1]
Only a few of the funding actors report their data, such as the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung, a cultural foundation and a joint venture of all member savings banks of the East German Savings Banks Association (of the federal states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt). It promotes and initiates cultural projects in urban and especially rural areas. It supported approx. 2 370 projects with a total sum of around 106 million euros (https://ostdeutsche-sparkassenstiftung.de/profil/) from 1996 to December 2021.
[1] Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI (Hrsg.) / Siebenhaar, Klaus / Müller, Achim (2019): Unternehmerische Kulturförderung in Deutschland, Berlin: Self-published.
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