Glen Donnelly

'It started with a leap of faith. With Artsupport Australia's guidance, philanthropy has given me the best head start I could imagine.' Glen Donnelly, viola player.

It’s a long way from Gosford to London’s Royal Academy of Music, but for Glen Donnelly it’s just another step on the road to becoming an internationally recognised viola player.

At the tender age of 20, Glen has taken on board the truism that talent and potential will only get you so far – it take guts, determination, hard work and, above all, persistence to make it to the top.

Glen’s dream of studying at the elite Royal Academy of Music (RAM) is a very expensive one – with tuition fees alone costing $65,000 per year.

But Glen is now studying at RAM under Paul Silverthorne, Principal Viola of the London Symphony, having raised 80 per cent of his first-year fees with help from Artsupport Australia and the Australia Business Arts Foundation (AbaF).

It’s an amazing achievement for an individual artist, especially one so young and with no prior fundraising experience.

From an early age, Glen received tremendous support from his parents and his local classical music community on the Central Coast of NSW.

But the financial and logistical challenges became much greater when Glen graduated from high school in 2005.

His music teachers had strongly advised him to pursue further studies in Europe. His parents Ruth and Peter had given Glen all possible support but were unable to finance overseas study.

Glen found himself in uncharted territory, but threw himself into the task of finding donors who would support him.

‘I had to take every opportunity to make myself known to people who are able to make large donations, to play to people whenever I could and to test the waters to see if they were interested in supporting me,’ he said.

‘I have also been extremely fortunate to have the support of an arts patron who has worked behind the scenes to get the interest of other donors.’

But Glen’s big breakthrough came when Samantha Meers of the Nelson Meers Foundation put him into contact with Louise Walsh from Artsupport Australia who in turn put Glen in contact with and Kirsten Matthews from the Australian Business Arts Foundation (AbaF).

AbaF manages a unique fund that turns helps donors to make tax-free contributions that can end up in the hands of artists – the Australian Cultural Fund (ACF).

Individual and business donors make cash contributions to the fund and nominate a preferred artist of arts organisation as the recipient. The AbaF Board then takes the preference into consideration when allocating grants. 

AbaF and Artsupport Australia provided unique advice about how I should approach potential donors, how to manage and nurture my relationships with them and how best to present my case,’ said Glen.

‘The ACF has been a tool with which I can seek funding which was never possible before for individual artists. To my knowledge, this is the first way in which individual artists can attract tax-deductible donations to support their art-making.’

While this support enabled Glen to achieve greater success, he was still required to put in a huge effort on his own behalf.

‘It’s still hard to find funds. You have to make the connections and do the hard work yourself. But having tax deductibility gave me more freedom to appeal to a wider range of supporters.’

Approaching so many potential donors has given Glen insights to what moves people to support an artist.

‘I have had to show donors that I am worthy of supporting, that I am hard working and that I have something to contribute to the music world with my art.

‘I think donors have supported me because they see the rare opportunity I have been given – to become a world-class artist studying, performing and networking at one of the best institutions in the world,’ said Glen.