Blogs

Have you noticed how dead-on-their-feet zombie fundraising techniques lurch on from year to year their income falling, their costs often rising and their ROI heading south; but for some inexplicabl

It is a little over 10 years since I had the vision for Create, a charity that would make society fairer, more caring and more inclusive by using the power of the arts to transform lives.  Whe

Gosh aren’t fundraisers a defensive, angry bunch of insecure people, lashing out at anyone who has the temerity to criticise them for being too professional, spending too much on raising money, or using aggressive fundraising techniques. Or maybe they aren’t. Maybe what some people interpret as an unwillingness to face up to what they perceive as some home truths about fundraising is really a sign that many fundraisers are just fed up to the back teeth of the same naïve and simplistic objections continually being rehashed and presented as insightful debate.

Forget Nike and Lance Armstrong; that was and continues to be just about the huge sums of money involved.  What about when ethical or charity brands align themselves with causes for perhaps the best of intentions but circumstances evolve in an undesirable way?

The influence of organisational culture on fundraising is rarely discussed in our sector.

Yesterday I met with Kylee Ingram who has developed Team Tap, a mobile app that lets spectators at sports and other events raise funds by competing to achieve the largest number of taps or bumps on

The London Marathon looms large in many charities' fundraising calendar, given that it is currently the largest single one-day fundraising event.

I was inspired to think about this blog by receiving an email from the Harvard Business Review collating several key works on the topics of leadership and management.  They note in weighty tomes that there is a difference between the two which is something most of us already understand, I suspect.

Backed up by no academic research whatsoever but fed by experience, anecdote and the thoughts of several, very experienced, close colleagues and friends, here are my common sense thoughts on leadership and management in the not for profit world:

How can charities say thank you to donors, supporters, event participants, members and anyone else who deserves those two words?

Telephone fundraising specialists The Phone Room have shared details of their recent successful campaign for the Chichester Festival Theatre's latest capital fundraising campaign.