This series of free half day workshops across England are designed for arts and culture organisations who want to improve their internal decision making and external communications with stakeholders and funders.

This workshop will provide a brief introduction to the principles of benchmarking and the products and services offered by MyCake before moving into a highly participatory approach designed to get you benchmarking and gaining the benefits from it within the workshop itself.

"I really enjoyed the session, I found it interesting, informative, engaging and extremely useful – and I don’t normally find data related sessions interesting!  Everybody should be doing it!" delegate at Manchester: Culture Benchmark session

You will need to bring a laptop plus a couple of years of management accounts data (annual) and (if appropriate) RFO survey data (the stats part you provided to ACE) and we will provide wi fi access so that you can benchmark your organisation on the day.

In the course of the workshop we will look at:

·      what collective data is and what it can be used for via benchmarking tools

·      what data your organisation produces as a matter of course that can be used for benchmarking purposes

·      what your benchmarking options are (there’s more out there than just the MyCake services!)

·      the benchmarking clusters that already exist and how you can join one near you

·      how to set up a benchmarking cluster if there isn’t one in your sector or region

·      how to add data into the Culture Benchmark

·      how to analyse the results of the Culture Benchmark (clearly if you have added data before the workshop you’ll get much more out of this element!)

In addition to ongoing access to the free MyCake tools, the RFO Benchmark and the Charity Benchmark, participants will have free access to the Culture Benchmark between the time they book a place on the workshop and the end of the workshop day itself. The Culture Benchmark is a subscription service and is priced at £250 + VAT per annum.

All participating organisations will also be able to book a one hour telephone conversation with Sarah Thelwall (MyCake founder) to discuss the results and ongoing uses of benchmarking in their organisation.

The workshops are open to senior and middle management staff in non-profit arts organisations across England. Places are limited to 20 per workshop.

Cancellation policy:

Any organisation or individual that books a place but does not give us 24 hours notice if they cannot attend on the day will be invoiced £100 + VAT to cover admin costs.

We anticipate high demand and need to discourage that bad habit of booking to reserve a free place but without prioritising it in your diary!

Event partners: