Data Security in Philanthropy

As the saying goes “Data Is the New Oil” and charities and non-profits certainly hold a lot of valuable data. We collect contact details, build up donor giving histories, process payments, build up donor and prospect profiles and gain insights into very personal and sensitive information. And we do this for a vast number of individuals, […]

Top 10 ways to make better decisions

Decisions, decisions! Our lives are full of them, from the small and mundane, such as what to wear or eat, to the life-changing, such as whether to get married and to whom, what job to take and how to bring up our children. We jealously guard our right to choose. It is central to our […]

5 Building Blocks of Great Advancement Talent Management

James Murphy shares: “One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is why our profession has such a high rate of turnover of professional fundraisers. I often hear that the average tenure in a job for a major gift officer is 18 months. A partial answer might be that as demand for good fundraisers has […]

Which Staff Member Has the Biggest Impact on Fundraising?

Which staff member in a fundraising office has the potential to the biggest, long-term impact? The Major Gift Officer? Sure. They bring in big gifts. Chief Development Officer? Absolutely. They have the ultimate responsibility. Planned Giving,Annual Fund, Special Events – any of these? All revenue generators. Sure. But who has the potential to have the […]

My experience of being a woman in the charity sector

Just as we all say that homogenous trustee boards lead to homogenous senior leadership and we all agree that we must tackle the balance of gender, sexual identification, ethnicity, ability and age on the Board, then we must be careful not to take our foot off the pedal just because we found brilliant leaders who […]

In conversation with Liesl Elder and Amanda Bringans… The Highlights

In 2018, Blackbaud ended their UK conference with a conversation between Liesl Elder, Chief Development Officer at the University of Oxford and Amanda Bringans, Director of Fundraising at the British Heart Foundation. Here, Blackbaud present highlights from their discussion as these two successful fundraising leaders from two sides of the sector, charity and Higher Education […]

Be confident, be bold: 10 tips from female charity leaders

This article first appeared in The Guardian in 2015. While more than two-thirds of the UK’s voluntary sector workforce are women, men still dominate leadership roles. In the UK’s top 50 fundraising charities by income, just 30% have female chief executives and only 36% of trustees are women. Women are still under-represented at the top, […]

Fundraising Directors – Why is your job so hard?

The majority of Development Directors are hired to grow income. In keeping with the ads and job descriptions, the charities are poised for growth and keen to hire an experienced fundraiser to lead the charge. The job interviews focus on a DD’s ability to raise funds, lead a team and be a senior team player […]

The BIG 5 in fundraising performance metrics

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 […]

The Other Side of the Impostor Syndrome – Impostor Syndrome

Are you really as good as you think? Humility aside most of us doubt ourselves at some stage – that’s just part of life. But how can we turn imposter syndrome around to become an advantage? How can it inspire us to achieve greater things? How can we use this knowledge to inspire our prospects […]