On June 20, 2018 / Fundraising Skills
In the summer of 2006 I played softball for my charity’s team in the London Charity Softball League. (If you’ve never seen a softball game, imagine the close cousin of baseball and rounders – hitting a ball to help your team score runs.) The second year I played, I asked someone who knew how to […]
On April 3, 2018 / Fundraising Skills
Guest Blog by Craig Linton (The Fundraising Detective), Individual Giving expert and co-author of Donors for Life. In recent blog posts, Rob has been talking about the extraordinary effect of compounding. The basic idea being that numerous small improvements can, over time, lead to breakthrough results. In individual giving A/B testing often leads […]
On March 26, 2018 / Fundraising Skills, Major Gifts
In my last blog I shared examples of the extraordinary power of compounding to increase your fundraising success over time. Put simply, by focusing on small, very achievable bits of progress in just a handful of (the right) areas, this momentum multiplies to achieve spectacular lifts in fundraising results. One of the most fascinating […]
On March 14, 2018 / Fundraising Skills, Major Gifts
I was recently told an illuminating story about the legendary basketball coach, Pat Riley, widely regarded as one of the most successful coaches of all time. (Attention, if you’re more interested in growing your fundraising success than basketball, I promise the basketball bit of this will be both brief and relevant.) Apparently, in one […]
On May 4, 2015 / Fundraising Skills, Uncategorized
The TV presenter spoke passionately. Her charisma is well-known. We listened. And then the fundraiser stood up to speak… I was recently at an event where we heard these two presentations. Both were intelligent and articulately argued, but one of them made a far bigger impact on the audience. Question: Which one? Answer: The presentation […]
On April 20, 2015 / Fundraising Skills
My favourite moment in the Shawshank Redemption is the look on the evil warden’s face when he finally discovers the tunnel that Andy Dufresne has been digging under his nose. I love it because finding the tunnel jolts my understanding of the entire plot up to this point, in which the nasty warden had seemed […]
On April 14, 2015 / Fundraising Skills
‘Should we accept money from the arms manufacturer?’ I was recently coaching the fundraising director of a small charity with a connection to the armed services. She said one of her biggest time-wasters was internal arguments about whether to accept support from a particular military supplier. I asked if she had an ethical policy which […]
On April 1, 2015 / Fundraising Skills, Major Gifts, Mentoring, Uncategorized
Can you find advantage in your biggest disadvantage? Many people are aware that Richard Branson is dyslexic. Until recently I had not been aware of research that shows that he shares this characteristic with many other entrepreneurs. Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a […]
On March 23, 2015 / Fundraising Skills, Major Gifts, Mentoring
My five year old son is not bad at hand writing. But to be honest I think he does find it more boring and harder work than some of his more sedentary class-mates. And yet during half term week, he voluntarily spent nearly two hours researching and writing a six page ‘book’. And he really […]
On March 16, 2015 / Fundraising Skills
In 2002 I noticed that the fundraisers around me with outstanding results, used more specific stories when they chatted to supporters, than people who got merely ‘average’ or ‘good’ results. My problem was I was not good at this. It was harder than it looked. So in order to get more confident, I enrolled for […]
‘What I love about the Major Gifts Mastery Programme is it’s so practical. I’ve seen loads of monetary value come from what we learned, including a gift of £200,000 from a trust that came about because of the learnings in the course. If you want to raise more money, I’d urge you to do the Programme.’
Paul McKenzie, Head of Major Giving and Corporate Partnerships, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home
Karen Arkell, Senior Officer, Corporate Partnerships, Teach First
Ben Swart, Head of Corporate New Business, NSPCC
Victoria Stephenson, Head of Major Donors, UNICEF UK
Citation by UK Skills National Training Award
Gemma Peters, Director of Development, King's College London
Kieran Cornwall, Senior Strategic Partnerships Manager, Cystic Fibrosis Trust
Kirsty Lawson, Corporate Account Team Manager, (Head of) at Alzheimer’s Society
Jess Coombs, Head of Corporate Fundraising, Teenage Cancer Trust and formerly at Action for Children