ABSTRACT
Museums have recently faced a great pressure to evolve in response to a rapidly changing social, political, and economic climate and to demonstrate their value, relevance, and significance in this shifting contemporary landscape. These pressures have been exacerbated by declining public funding for cultural organizations, a trend that has impacted the majority of cultural institutions across Europe. Within this challenging and fast-changing environment, museums have been required to explore new business models that embrace plural sources of funding, enabling declining public sources to be augmented with self-generated income, business sponsorship, and philanthropic sources. These new, more commercial, business-like modes of operation may create tensions within institutions, potentially undermine their mission-based goals, and erode their capacity to uphold long-held ethical principles and values. Some European countries have already reacted to this pressing issue and established policies, rules, and regulations for cooperation between public cultural institutions and corporate sector. In this chapter, we explore how policies in different European countries address this issue and how these impact museums behavior in terms of fundraising and philanthropy. The chapter offers an overview of European regulations on fundraising and philanthropy.
