Patronage as a way out of crisis? the case of major cultural institutions in Spain

Drawing on both resource dependence theory and institutional theory, this study attempts to explore how, as a result of the financial crisis of 2008 and the drastic cuts to public funding for culture, corporate sponsorship has been acquiring an increasingly important role in the financial structure and internal organisation of large cultural facilities. Based on a sample of fifteen of Spain’s most emblematic cultural institutions located in the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, the application of these two complementary theories offers an insight into the growth in direct donors’ contributions to major state-owned cultural institutions in Spain, while also helping to explain the influence of institutional environments on organisations, with an emphasis on the central role that board composition plays in fundraising income.