Financing rules of the activity of cultural institutions in the context of economic efficiency

Motivation: The authors are interested in the problem of financing of theatres as cultural institutions also because of the arising conflict between the objectives set by the organizers of the institutions, and those managers and artists consider the most important in the public cultural institutions. Aim: The aim of this article is the efficiency evaluation of statutory subsidies granted to cultural institutions in the context of subsidizing rules of these institutions. Results: The system of financing municipal cultural institutions is predominantly based on statutory subsidies from the organizer’s budget. Therefore, statutory grants play an important role of creating income and of stabilizing finances of cultural institutions. Their share in the total amount of revenue of the examined cultural institutions persisted at a high level throughout subsequent years of the study period. Although statutory subsidies significantly improve the financial situation of cultural institutions. Those which are using subsidies to a lesser degree, and those whose important source of financing their activities were their own revenues, are characterized by higher efficiency. Unfortunately, the analysis of the data indicates that there is a very small group of institutions characterized by a high indicator of financing.