Statistical insights on the arts

Statistical insights on the arts

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Statistical insights on the arts
Statistical insights on the arts
Arts, culture, and heritage organizations are much smaller than other types of not-for-profit organizations
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Arts, culture, and heritage organizations are much smaller than other types of not-for-profit organizations

Big picture analysis of the number of organizations, revenues, and employment levels in Canada, the provinces, and the territories

Hill Strategies (Kelly Hill)'s avatar
Hill Strategies (Kelly Hill)
Aug 06, 2024
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Statistical insights on the arts
Statistical insights on the arts
Arts, culture, and heritage organizations are much smaller than other types of not-for-profit organizations
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My last couple of posts have been a deep dive into data on not-for-profit organizations in the arts, culture, and heritage in Canada, the provinces, and territories, with lots of detail about rural organizations. That might have been too deep of a dive: I feel like there are some key facts that I glossed over in my national and provincial posts.

This week, I revisit the same dataset, with an eye to bigger picture questions:

  • How small or large (on average) are not-for-profit organizations in the arts, culture, and heritage?

  • How does the size of arts, culture, and heritage not-for-profit organizations compare with other types of not-for-profits?

  • How does the size of cultural not-for-profits vary across the country?

The dataset is very useful: it has a great breakdown for arts, culture, and heritage organizations, and it includes statistics on all not-for-profit organizations that reported either revenues or employees in 2021.

An important drawback is that the data are not particularly recent, dating back to 2021. Also, the dataset does not provide information about revenue sources. Finally,we cannot glean much historical information from the dataset: it only goes back to 2019. More details about the dataset are at the end of this post.

As I’ve noted in previous posts, the 6,368 not-for-profit organizations in the arts, culture, and heritage generated $6.4 billion in revenues and employed 76,400 people in 2021. Arts, culture, and heritage organizations represent 5% of all not-for-profit organizations, 2% of revenues, and 2% of employment.


Arts, culture, and heritage organizations tend to be smaller than the average for not-for-profit organizations

Average revenues are $1.0 million for not-for-profit organizations in the arts, culture, and heritage. Among 11 types of not-for-profit organizations, the arts, culture, and heritage rank 8th, or 4th smallest, as shown in the following graph.

The average revenues for arts, culture, and heritage organizations ($1.0 million) is 58% less than the average for all not-for-profit organizations ($2.4 million). However, the overall average is strongly influenced by two groups of very large organizations: education & research, and health (both of which have average revenues around $15 million).

Arts, culture, and heritage organizations are closest in average size to organizations in social services ($1.1 million), business and professional associations, plus unions ($1.2 million), and organizations in law, advocacy, and politics ($0.9 million).

Bar graph of average revenues of not-for-profit organizations by type, Canada, 2021 (millions of dollars). Religion: $0.4 million. Sports, recreation & social clubs: $0.5 million. Law, advocacy & politics: $0.9 million. Arts, culture & heritage: $1 million. Social services: $1.1 million. Business /prof'l associations & unions: $1.2 million. Philanthropy & voluntarism promotion: $2.1 million. Environment: $2.3 million. All organizations: $2.4 million. Development & housing: $3.4 million. Health: $14.8 million. Education & research: $15.7 million. Source: Hill Strategies Research calculations based on Statistics Canada. Table 45-10-0085-01.  Estimates of active non-profit organization counts, revenues and employment by activity, 2021.

The remainder of the post examines average employment and size differences between the provinces and territories.


Average number of employees

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