Heritage as Business

‘We are in the business of conservation access.’ So did Hilary McGrady, Director of Operations and Consultancy at the National Trust, introduce the conversation at an evening event I took part in hosted by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and their Trusted Source Knowledge Transfer Partnership in 2018.

It might seem obvious, but like all third sector organisations, a ‘business-like’ approach is crucial to enable the National Trust to do what it does best. Heritage organisations such as the National Trust need to be able to manage their resources – the land, buildings and other heritage they safeguard – as much as any other business. The Trust has its own unique business challenges – lack of Wi-Fi and 3G signal in remote locations, for example, or the unique challenges (and opportunities) of a largely voluntary workforce – and like any business must find the most practical and efficient way around these. The Trust has learnt important lessons about the power of brand, of understanding, engaging and keeping an audience, and of managing a very large and diverse workforce, just like any other business.

And the National Trust really is big business. It employs 11,000 people and occupies 60,000 volunteers nationwide. It is the biggest hitter in the UK’s fourth or fifth largest industry – the industry of heritage. Heritage drives tourism in the UK: a third of overseas and two-thirds of domestic tourists in the UK are visiting heritage sites. It contributes over £20 billion to our GDP with on average around 24 million visitors to historic houses alone (which is strikingly fewer than visited the whole of Japan in the same year).

Beyond simple tourism, heritage also has knock-on effects in other sectors: heritage sites can, for example, increase the value of nearby property by as much as 30%. The ‘business of heritage’ is, however, not without its critics. It has, in truth, too often been seen as a challenge to the core purposes of conservation charities such as the National Trust.

But it is ‘not just about making money’. In fact, money-making must be subservient to the Trust’s own values and its own core purpose. Of the money that comes into the Trust (of its £522 million income, £155 million comes from its operational ‘business’, with the rest coming from sources such as membership, fundraising and grants), anything that is not spent on operating costs goes straight back into conservation and visitor experience projects. It is, after all, the organisation’s core mission – ‘for ever, for everyone’ – that drives the whole enterprise. The main cost of running the Trust is balancing the competing demands of ‘for ever’ and ‘for everyone’.

So ‘What can business-thinking do to help?’ The ‘business of business’ is about more than that - the skills, techniques and processes of the private sector are applicable to the public sector. Equally, and perhaps the private sector has much to learn about values, about humans as well as processes, and about engaging with others from the public sector.

It is these lessons of value and purpose for which ‘business’ is a means to an end – which the heritage and cultural sectors are so well-placed to teach. Hilary McGrady started her lecture talking about a National Trust property in her native Northern Ireland – the Black Mountain, just outside Belfast. This had once been a military base and a no-go area during the troubles, but thanks to the Trust, it is now being looked after and made accessible to the local populace. The National Trust is uniquely placed to both maintain and open up these special and previously out-of-bounds places. The ‘business of heritage’ simply allows them to do this better.

Pegram Harrison, Cultural Associates Oxford

A version of this article was first posted on the Saïd Business School’s Engaging with the Humanities blog