From the report's "Introduction":
"The BC Alliance for Arts + Culture, with funding from the Vancouver Foundation, commissioned Kelly Hill of Hill Strategies Research to conduct a major research project regarding the situation of the arts and culture in British Columbia. The project’s four research streams include examining existing research and data, conducting a province-wide survey of not-for-profit arts and culture organizations, conducting interviews about best practices, and comparing revenue sources between select BC organizations and similar ones in other provinces.
This report summarizes findings from the province-wide survey of arts and culture organizations. The survey was available at BCculturesurvey.com between June 18 and July 20, 2015. The Alliance for Arts + Culture and Hill Strategies Research thank respondents for their time and openness in completing the survey.
206 B.C. arts and culture organizations completed at least a substantial portion of the survey. Some respondents skipped some questions, and the percentages in this report are based on the number responding to that question, not the overall number of usable (but partial) responses to the survey (i.e., 206).
A report from StepUp BC (Characteristics of the Labour Market in BC’s Non-Profit Sector, March 2014) provides an estimate of 4,515 arts and culture organizations in the province. The 206 respondents to the survey represent 4.6% of this StepUp BC estimate. However, it should be noted that the StepUp BC estimate includes some organizations that are in existence but may not have been active during the year.
The StepUP BC report also estimates that there are 676 arts and culture organizations that are charities and have at least one employee (whether part-time or full-time). In the Alliance’s survey, 86% of respondents have at least a part-time staff member and 67% are charities. A more appropriate statistic than the broad numbers above might be to compare the number of charities with staff responding to the Alliance’s survey (120) with StepUp BC’s estimated total of arts and culture charities of organizations with staff (676). In this case, the 120 responding charities with staff represent 18% of all arts and culture charities with staff.
While this was not a randomized survey, many efforts were made to ensure broad geographic and discipline distribution of respondents. As highlighted in the body of the report, responses were received from organizations in 45 different communities and 166 different postal codes across the province. In addition, organizations from a wide range of disciplines responded to the survey."
