Helping you to fundraise properly
Information on how to be a good leader and ensure your strategy is pointing you in the right direction. Includes advise on recruitment.
An exploration of the intersection of compliance and ethics programmes and behavioural science may not immediately strike you as a top candidate for your summer reading list – especially a fundraising reading list – but it would be a mistake to miss out on this review of a research paper by Meredith Niles. She considers how the learnings could be applied to fundraising to provide us with some well considered new perspectives.
This long read by John Baguley from International Fundraising Consultancy is split into several parts and what the team has learnt as they gear up to the firms 20th anniversary. focus on their top 20 tips to help us fundraise more effectively.
These 20 key facts every fundraiser should know: some are basic and some are outside any box we have ever found. None should be forgotten as we seek to grow our income and influence.
Part 1: https://groupifc.com/blog/2020-vision-in-fundraising/
Part 2: https://groupifc.com/blog/2020-vision-in-fundraising-part-ii/
Part 3: https://groupifc.com/blog/2020-vision-in-fundraising-part-iii/
Part 4: https://groupifc.com/blog/2020-vision-in-fundraising-part-iv/
Are you drowning in analysis paralysis? Having data to back up your decision making is good, but sometimes there is just too much!
Sometimes people often struggle to convert data into effective solutions to problems. The problem isn’t lack of data; the vast amount of data means managers struggle to prioritise what’s important. In the end, they end up applying arbitrary data toward new problems, reaching a subpar solution.
Here, Tanya Menon and Leigh Thompson discuss how you can make better decisions with less data.
https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-make-better-decisions-with-less-data
Reinier Spruit discusses how we’re in the relationship building business and how we need to measure and register every response.
Ironically, we must quantify the relations with our donors, so we can improve the quality of the contact we have with them.
There are a ton of metrics we can track, and should track, like email open rates, sign-up rates per hour, one-off cash donations and appeal response rates. But there are 5 that are simply much more important. Mainly because they are the building blocks for making sensible decisions for the longer term.
I call them the Big Five. The Big Five are Volume, Expenditure, Income, Retention and Return on Investment.
Find out more by clicking the link below:
https://101fundraising.org/2014/05/big-5-fundraising-performance-metrics/
To deliver against their duties, charity trustees need to be able to identify the critical issues – the charity’s purposes and plans, its solvency, its resilience and quality of governance – and to be able to review these at regular intervals.
In this post, the Charity Commission has designed 15 questions to help charity trustees carry out such a review and decide what they need to focus on.
Boards play a crucial role in helping a charity achieve its mission and deliver the greatest impact possible. Sonali Patel discusses that when charities follow best practice in governance, they are more effective, forward looking and efficiently run.
Funders of charities require good governance for a charity to be effective. While there are exceptions, it is therefore surprising that there are not more funders who provide investment for charities to improve governance.
https://www.alliancemagazine.org/blog/funders-can-unlock-good-charity-governance/
Dan Francis from the NCVO shares key findings from the Good Trustee Guide.
Amongst the recommendations, Dan discusses how to make boards more diverse, accessible and make inductions less complex.
Nonprofit board members have the potential to be exceptional ambassadors for the charity. However, finding the time to coach board members in the art of putting the organization’s public face on view can be tricky.
In some cases, the CEO simply doesn’t encourage contact between the board and staff. At other times, they fail to include selected directors in important conversations with key public figures and/or major donors or foundation executives.
In this article, Eugene Fram highlights a number of ways to develop “ambassadorships” on the nonprofit board:
What are the expectations a new Development Director faces when they start? Are they facing realistic objectives?
Susie Hills shares some important concepts in this fun blog to help institutional leaders and Development Directors avoid common pitfalls.
https://www.halpinpartnership.com/debate/how-will-i-know-if-my-development-director-doing-good-job
Do you always find yourself saying “yes” to requests and then wondering what to do? While it is always worth being helpful, not delivering on promises made isn’t being helpful either.
In this blog, Mikaela Kiner provides helpful thoughts on how to say “no”. Food for thought.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40561649/how-to-get-better-at-saying-no