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…
Propelling your organization to double-digit growth, exponential mission impact, and leadership in your movement, there are only a few strategies that consistently make the grade. Focus on major gifts from all sources Make individual giving Read more…
There are many little details that drive great fundraising, but they count for nothing if the big idea is not right. This is evidenced. The ‘big idea’ is one of the trinity of big chunks Read more…
You are writing about upgrading, cross selling and cash gifts. Why these three? I covered retention separately in my two blogs (here and here) on relationship fundraising and (here) on recruitment. These three are the Read more…
Blue ocean strategy is an alternative way of approaching strategy that’s about creating new markets (a blue ocean) instead of competing in existing markets (a red ocean). This distinction is of fundamental importance to fundraisers Read more…
For almost as long as I’ve been a fundraiser, I’ve struggled with the disconnect between the notion that more donors equals more funds raised and the reality – that I’ve seen too often – that the Read more…
Preview for IFC session by Charlie Hulme and Ken Burnett ‘How to make relationship fundraising work for you and your donors’ One of the biggest mistakes many in our sector are making in response to Read more…
You’ll have to be my age or older if you know the name of Harold Sumption. And even then, you probably won’t. But you should. Harold was there at the beginning of modern fundraising. He Read more…
Evaluating activity v/s performance In my last post , I shared my insights on the importance of making Optimism an actvity (yes! not just an attitude) to impact fundraising performance. In this post, I Read more…
I’ve just been watching the movie, Selma. It tells the story of the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King and his frustration at the slow pace for bringing about change and the right Read more…
Beg, Borrow or Steal? Every charity I know of now has firmly embedded in its fundraising and marketing strategy an objective around ‘innovation’ and the need to develop new ideas, new target audiences or innovations Read more…
Our sector’s never taken the kind of media mangling it took earlier this month. (For anyone outside the UK who doesn’t know what I’m talking about quickly Google ‘Fundraising in the UK’. You will see Read more…
108 people die every minute That means during the IFC (if it is a typical three days) that 466,560 people will die. I hope I am not one of them. I also hope you are Read more…
What will the charity landscape look like in 2035? That’s a question we ask ourselves a lot lately. Economic crises, changing consumer behavior and new forms of entrepreneurship force organizations to change. If you take Read more…
