Web tool helps Arts Council gather funding figures faster

A new online survey tool set up by Arts Council England has made it faster and easier for organisations who receive funding to submit their annual figures.

Developed with market research agency ORC International, the Arts Council web application has seen 99% of organisations complete their submission within six weeks, compared to 85% in six months in previous years.

The submission process previously consisted of a complicated Excel spreadsheet.

The tool helps Arts Council England to increase the response rate, reduce the amount of manual data processing and error checking that was required, and create a more user-friendly process.

The tool has also enabled Arts Council England to for the first time to release the annual submission data as Official Statistics.

Arts Council England supports over 800 organisations every year, ranging from the Royal Shakespeare Company to individual artists, who are all required to submit yearly activity data.

www.artscouncil.org.uk