Best Software for Arts, Culture, and Heritage Charities in the UK (2026)

Arts, culture, and heritage charities need software that handles the unique demands of creative programming — event and workshop booking, participant engagement tracking, venue management, volunteer coordination, and demonstrating impact to funders. The right platform replaces disconnected spreadsheets and ticketing systems with a single system for managing activities, people, and reporting.

TL;DR: Arts and cultural charities should look for software that combines event and workshop booking, room and venue management, participant tracking, volunteer coordination, donor and funder management, and impact reporting. Community-focused arts charities benefit most from purpose-built charity platforms with strong booking and impact tools, while large ticketed venues may need specialist performing arts systems. Plinth offers a comprehensive platform covering bookings, room bookings, volunteering, surveys, payments, and impact reporting — designed for UK charities running community programmes. For organisations heavily focused on donor and patron management, Beacon or Donorfy may be stronger options.

Who this is for: Arts charity managers, community arts programme leads, gallery and museum directors, heritage organisation coordinators, and trustees evaluating CRM or management software for their organisation.

The Arts, Culture, and Heritage Charity Sector in 2026

The UK's arts, culture, and heritage sector is navigating a period of both opportunity and pressure. The UK government has committed £1.5 billion to cultural organisations over a five-year period from 2025 to 2030, including £160 million earmarked for regional and local museums. Arts Council England distributes £446 million per annum to 990 organisations through its 2023-2026 Investment Programme, with a 5% funding increase confirmed for 2025-26.

However, competition for funding is fierce. Arts Council England's open project grants funded roughly 32% of applicants in 2023-24 (3,084 awards out of 9,642 applications), and individual artist grants had only a 20% success rate. The Creative Foundations Fund has pledged £85 million in 2025-26 for urgent capital works to keep venues operational, highlighting the financial strain many organisations face.

At the same time, 77% of charities saw their income either grow or remain stable during the past year, and 64% of charity leaders feel positive about 2026. The strongest growth is expected from corporate fundraising (59%), followed by fundraising events (53%) and individual giving (46%). For arts charities, this means demonstrating measurable impact and managing relationships with multiple funders is more important than ever. Software that streamlines administration and evidences engagement outcomes is no longer optional — it is essential for securing and retaining funding.

What Arts, Culture, and Heritage Charities Need from Software

Arts charities operate in a distinctive way. A single organisation might run weekly community workshops, manage a gallery exhibition programme, hire out studio spaces, coordinate a volunteer team of 50, deliver a summer festival, and report outcomes to three separate funders — all simultaneously. This creates requirements that neither generic business software nor standard charity CRMs fully address.

Event and Workshop Booking

Community arts charities run a high volume of activities — pottery classes, music workshops, theatre rehearsals, heritage walks, children's craft sessions, and more. Software must handle recurring sessions, one-off events, capacity limits, waitlists, and online registration. Parents booking a children's art workshop need a different flow from an artist registering for a residency programme.

Room and Venue Management

Many arts charities operate from shared spaces — community centres, galleries, studios, and heritage buildings. Room booking functionality is essential for managing internal programming alongside external hires, avoiding double-bookings, and generating revenue from venue hire. Nearly £53 million of additional Arts Council funding is being directed outside London in 2025-26, meaning more regional arts spaces need effective management tools.

Participant Tracking and Engagement

Arts charities need to know who is attending their programmes, how often, and with what outcomes. Tracking engagement across multiple activities — a participant who attends a painting class, volunteers at a festival, and donates to an annual appeal — requires a unified view. Without this, organisations cannot identify their most engaged community members or spot participants who are disengaging.

Volunteer Coordination

Volunteers are the backbone of many arts and heritage organisations. Museum guides, gallery invigilators, festival stewards, workshop assistants, and heritage site custodians all need to be recruited, trained, scheduled, and retained. The UK charity sector relies on approximately 173,000 charitable organisations, many of which depend on volunteers for front-line delivery. Software should manage availability, DBS checks where required, skills matching, and hour logging.

Impact Measurement

Funders expect evidence of outcomes, not just headcounts. Arts charities increasingly need to demonstrate wellbeing improvements, social connectivity, skills development, and community engagement. Validated survey tools — such as the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) or bespoke distance-travelled questionnaires — should be built into the software, with aggregated reporting that satisfies Arts Council England, local authority, and trust and foundation requirements.

Donor and Funder Management

Arts charities typically have complex funding portfolios: project grants from Arts Council England, local authority service contracts, trust and foundation grants, corporate sponsors, individual patrons, and membership schemes. Managing these relationships, tracking restricted and unrestricted income, and generating funder-specific reports requires either a dedicated CRM or strong reporting tools within an all-in-one platform.

Payments and Ticketing

Whether charging for workshop places, selling exhibition tickets, or processing venue hire fees, arts charities need integrated payment processing. The ability to handle free bookings, paid bookings, and donations within a single system reduces administrative overhead and reconciliation headaches.

How Plinth Supports Arts, Culture, and Heritage Charities

Plinth is a purpose-built platform for UK charities that brings together the tools arts and cultural organisations need for community programme delivery. Rather than stitching together separate products for booking, venue management, volunteering, and surveys, Plinth provides an integrated solution.

Bookings

Manage event and workshop bookings with online registration, capacity management, waitlists, and recurring session support. Community members can book directly for art classes, heritage walks, or children's activities, reducing phone calls and manual administration for your team. Learn more about Bookings

Room Bookings

Manage studio, gallery, rehearsal, and meeting room availability from a single calendar. Handle internal programming alongside external hires, set pricing per room and time slot, and avoid double-bookings. Generate revenue reports to understand which spaces are most in demand. Learn more about Room Bookings

Volunteering

Recruit, manage, and retain volunteers with tools for availability tracking, role matching, DBS monitoring, training records, and hour logging. Whether you need gallery invigilators on a Tuesday afternoon or festival stewards for a weekend, Plinth helps you coordinate your volunteer team. Learn more about Volunteering

Surveys

Collect participant feedback and measure wellbeing outcomes using built-in survey tools. Design pre- and post-programme questionnaires, track distance-travelled metrics, and gather the qualitative data funders increasingly require. Aggregate results across programmes for organisation-wide impact analysis. Learn more about Surveys

Impact Reporting

Generate funder-ready reports that combine attendance data, survey results, financial information, and narrative evidence. Segment reports by programme, funding stream, time period, or demographic group. With Arts Council England and other funders demanding stronger evidence of outcomes, automated impact reporting saves hours of manual data compilation each quarter. Learn more about Impact Reporting

Payments

Process payments for workshop fees, venue hire, event tickets, and donations through integrated Stripe-powered payment processing. Handle free and paid bookings within the same system, with automatic reconciliation and Gift Aid support. Learn more about Payments

Comparing Software Options for Arts Charities

The right software depends on your organisation's size, focus, and primary needs. A community arts charity running workshops and managing a venue has different requirements from a large theatre selling 100,000 tickets per year.

When Plinth is the best fit

Plinth works best for community arts charities, heritage organisations, and cultural centres that run participatory programmes — workshops, classes, community events, and venue hire. If your primary need is managing activities, participants, volunteers, and demonstrating impact to funders, Plinth provides these tools in a single integrated platform without requiring technical expertise. It is designed for UK charities and understands their reporting requirements.

When to consider other options

Beacon is a strong choice for arts charities where donor and patron management is the primary requirement. Rated number one in Fundraising Magazine's 2025 CRM Survey, Beacon excels at managing individual giving, major donors, and fundraising campaigns. If your organisation's revenue comes primarily from donations and memberships rather than programme fees, Beacon is worth evaluating.

Donorfy is purpose-built for fundraising and works well for arts charities focused on individual giving, regular giving programmes, and legacy fundraising. It integrates with tools like Mailchimp and JustGiving for a fundraising-focused workflow.

Spektrix is built specifically for performing arts organisations — theatres, concert halls, performing arts centres, and festivals. It combines ticketing, CRM, marketing, and fundraising in a single system, with pricing based on ticket volume. If your organisation sells a high volume of tickets and needs integrated audience development tools, Spektrix is the sector specialist. Over 350 arts organisations use Spektrix in the UK.

Tessitura serves over 800 member organisations across 10 countries and is designed for large cultural institutions — major museums, opera houses, symphony orchestras, and performing arts centres. It provides a unified CRM, ticketing, fundraising, and membership system. Originally developed by the Metropolitan Opera, Tessitura is powerful but carries a higher price point and implementation overhead that suits larger organisations with dedicated data teams.

Salesforce offers flexibility through its nonprofit edition and extensive app marketplace, but requires significant configuration and often third-party implementation support. It suits large organisations with technical resource and complex multi-system requirements. The Charity Commission register lists over 173,000 charities in England and Wales — the vast majority do not have the budget or team size to justify a Salesforce deployment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best CRM for small arts charities in the UK?

For small arts charities running community workshops, classes, and events, a purpose-built charity platform like Plinth typically offers better value than a traditional CRM. Plinth combines booking, volunteer management, surveys, and impact reporting in a single system designed for UK charities, without requiring technical expertise or per-user pricing that penalises growing teams. For small arts charities where fundraising from individual donors is the primary activity, Beacon offers a modern, affordable CRM with strong Gift Aid and donor management tools.

Do arts charities need specialist software or can they use a general charity CRM?

It depends on the type of arts charity. Community arts organisations running workshops, classes, and venue hire benefit from platforms with strong booking and room management features — capabilities that most general charity CRMs lack. Theatre companies and performing arts venues with high-volume ticketing often need specialist systems like Spektrix or Tessitura. Heritage organisations managing community engagement programmes, volunteer teams, and funder reporting can use platforms like Plinth that combine these functions. A general CRM like Salesforce or Beacon can work but may require add-ons or workarounds for activity-specific needs.

How do arts charities measure and report impact?

Arts charities typically measure impact through a combination of quantitative data (attendance figures, participant demographics, repeat engagement rates) and qualitative outcomes (wellbeing improvements, skills development, social connectivity). Common approaches include pre- and post-programme surveys using validated tools such as WEMWBS, distance-travelled questionnaires, and participant case studies. Funders like Arts Council England increasingly require evidence of outcomes beyond simple activity counts. Software with built-in survey tools and automated impact reporting — such as Plinth's Surveys and Impact Reporting features — can significantly reduce the administrative burden of compiling this evidence.

How much does software for arts charities cost?

Costs vary significantly by platform and organisation size. Plinth and Beacon offer per-organisation pricing that is accessible to small and medium charities. Donorfy charges per contact, which can scale up as your database grows. Spektrix uses a per-ticket pricing model that scales with your activity. Tessitura operates on a membership fee model suited to larger institutions. Salesforce offers discounted nonprofit licences but implementation and customisation costs can be substantial. Most platforms offer demos or trials, so it is worth testing with your specific workflows before committing.

Recommended Next Pages

• CRM for Charities — A broader guide to choosing a CRM for any type of charity
• Room Booking Software for Charities — How to manage venue hire and internal room bookings
• Volunteer Management Software — A complete guide to coordinating volunteers
• Impact Reporting — How to measure and report outcomes effectively
• How to Take Payments for Activities — Setting up online payments for workshops and events
• Community Centre Management Software — Software for organisations managing community spaces

Last updated: February 2026 Running an arts or cultural organisation? Book a demo or contact our team.