Philanthropy when applied to a good cause is laudable and beneficial to the giver and the receiver. In the arts it’s an idea that’s probably older than the Renaissance, the Medicis and Machiavelli.
Launceston is somewhat unique in regard to philanthropy in that each and every ratepayer, resident and tenant is automatically conscripted into the ranks of the philanthropists when it comes to the QVMAG.
In the past three or so years Launcestonians have stumped up something in the order of $12 million towards the QVMAG’s recurrent costs and then some. That is the kind of conscripted philanthropy that you do not get elsewhere.
Business and other private discretionary philanthropists, generally, fund projects and acquisitions with the latter often serving as some kind of memorial or cultural marker.
Sadly institutions like the QVMAG are going to need to look for different ways to meet their recurrent costs. As likely as not any solution is going to be the outcome of ‘outside-the-box’
entrepreneurial thinking.
Philanthropists are fickle and sometimes frivolous. However depending on philanthropy to keep the doors open would be more than frivolous in these ‘difficult times’.
Ray Norman
Trevallyn
