Sweden/ 6. Financing of culture  

6.3 Trends and indicators for private cultural financing

Since the 1990s, business sponsoring has been advocated and tried as a complement to public financial support of cultural institutions. Expectations that sponsoring would become an important source of funding have proved wrong so far, and the issue has, in view of the marginality of current sponsoring, begun to cool down politically. The report of the Cultural Policy Commission (SOU 2009:16) and the 2009 Government Bill on Culture both emphasised collaboration with both, civil society and business, rather than short-term sponsorships.

Official cultural statistics does not calculate the size of voluntary contributions either in the form of voluntary work or in the form of donations. Since donations to cultural purposes are not tax deductible, and no statistics are collected, no data exist on the size of donations. The extent to which sponsorship and donations are common on the local level in smaller towns and communities is largely unknown, although this is likely an important source of income for minor cultural endeavours. However, it also appears that in terms of cultural funding from private foundations and in terms of the mobilisation of voluntary work in various cultural associations, civil society support of culture appears to be far more important than business. Civil society organisations in arts and culture estimate that the total number of hours of voluntary work in their activities to nearly 16 million, or an average of 100 hours a year per volunteer. In addition, most state museums have a "friend of" association attached to them and these have, in many cases, provided significant financial contributions to the museum.

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