Good news for major gift fundraisers: major donors feel (way) more engaged than NGOs think. Apart from giving money, major donors want to invest their time in, and share their network with, NGOs. Also, the Read more…
Pay it Forward I landed my first job in fundraising as an unprepared novice with big responsibilities and a bottom line to achieve. For the past seven years, I’d been home raising two children, doing Read more…
Think of some things that you would consider unethical for a fundraiser to do. You probably came up with stuff such as putting pressure on donors, making them feel guilty, targeting vulnerable people, using shock Read more…
On the real and virtual high streets of the UK, John Lewis – an employee owned UK department store – owns Christmas. The launch of the John Lewis Christmas advert has become an important part Read more…
A lot happens in one year… In 2014, I posted an article on the Top 5 Questions fundraisers should be asking in a job interview. Not realizing, at the time, I would get to put Read more…
We’re The Ripple Refugee Project, a group of private citizens in Toronto who’ve come together because we want to help refugee families start new lives in Canada.And under Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program, that Read more…
~Numerous Jedi Masters have translated this post from Yoda’s unique way of speaking to improve reading ease.~ There is much Dark Side fundraising being done in our sector. Yet no one fundraiser is to blame. Read more…
The Resource Alliance’s International Fundraising Congress is hands down the best investment a fundraiser can make in their career and themselves. Every year, some of the best minds in fundraising gather in Noordwijk to elevate Read more…
What a difference a year makes – last year I was in Malaysia working with a brilliant Buddhist charity that helps orphans and elderly people sadly neglected, when the ice-bucket challenge hit and all the Read more…
With so much concern about how the charity sector treats donors and those it hopes will become supporters, suddenly the donor is right there in the spotlight. What do donors want? How can we meet Read more…
Some years ago, I had a charity Board insist that my fundraising programme should deliver a return on investment, or fundraising ratio, of 4:1; that is, not cost more than 25% of gross income. On Read more…
One of my long term mantra’s has been to ‘use windows, not mirrors’, a simple way of reminding myself that truly to move forward, be in line with the market place and to have any Read more…
‘Two weeks of my time, completely wasted!’ The frustration was evident on the face of the corporate fundraiser. She had been telling me she had known from the start that the partnership she’d been told Read more…
A friend of mine has spent three years working with refugees on the border of Turkey and Syria. Sometimes the challenges were overwhelming, 16 hour days for weeks on end, as the stream of people Read more…
Look at your board and your leadership team… How many are men? How many are over 50? How many are white? If the answer is: “most of them” – you are leaving money on the Read more…
Time flies when you’re having fun, right? We’ve rushed through the 3rd quarter and again we saw some spectacular posts coming by. We see some familiar names in the Top 10, and as always Charlie Read more…
When fundraising is seen as a public enemy, for sure it’s time to change. To coincide with last Wednesday’s launch of the Etherington Review* the BBC published a poll revealing that 52 per cent of Read more…
I have been somewhat dismayed at the flood of criticisms that are now threatening to engulf our great profession. In my fifty years of fundraising, I have never seen anything like it. First, the sad Read more…
Preview of a NEW IFC SESSION, led by you… Nothing better sums up our sector than a line from a sketch by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore: Dud: Would you say you’ve learned from your Read more…
Will my intern ever understand what I’m trying to say? The newbie has only ever volunteered before, don’t ask them. You’ve been doing this 6 months what would you know? In a couple of years Read more…
Sooner or later, you’re going to get a donor like me. I’m that awful donor who expects to be thanked immediately, is quick to take offense, and won’t hesitate to contact you if I’m unhappy Read more…
There’s been a lot of discussion about supporter experience recently, and as a massive advocate of long term relationship fundraising, I’ve been asked several times about KPI’s and ROI’s on supporter experience. It’s not an Read more…
Omar Mahmoud, Chief of Market Knowledge at UNICEF International, and I are running a Big Room session at IFC on The Science of Decision Making and Behavioural Economics. We’d love to see you there. The Read more…
Name two Austrian inventions that have gone global and engage with many 1000s of young people worldwide. OK, so you knew all about Red Bull and no doubt our younger readers here are using to Read more…
Remember how you felt last week when you saw the photo of Aylan Kurdi, the little Syrian boy who drowned and ended up on a Turkish resort beach? Or when you saw Laith Majid, the Read more…
