Where do you start?

Hello everyone.. i only joined today and came across this forum in my efforts to educate myself about fundraising.

At the end of Dec i was made aware of a dire situation in a small community in South Africa, and the lady who told me about the situation and myself decided within a matter of hours, that we needed to do something.
So.. i started on my road to forming the babybearproject. I have never done any fundraising before.. so this was all new to me... i firstly rang the charities commission to "register our project" to be informed, that we needed £1000 (the magical financial figure for all fundraisers i guess)... and thought, well not a problem well have that in no time.. easier said then done.
Well, almost 3 weeks on i have secured a large chunk of the money in a one of grant, have established a good relationship with various newspapers who are running our project, managed to persuade one paper to start up a "charity corner", managed to get the South African High Commission in London to help us with publicity and donations, contacted the local maternity hospitals who agreed to collect/spread the word for us, have received 29 donations, my partner in South Africa has been able to hand over 9 complete boxes to the clinic, we have recruited a voluntary fundraiser in Ireland...
I contacted some local businesses who agreed to do competitions (fastest typist, fastest sorter that kind of thing, with the company providing the prizes) and promote the project.
I was wavering at one point or other.. but actually looking at it all written down i reckon we can be proud of ourselves. If we manage to raise the £1000 by the end of this month we will have done it in record time.
Thanks for reading this :)
Nicky

Claire

Yes, that's a tough brief, but not at all impossible: at least you've got demonstrable users (or 'clients') who presumably value the centres' services and could endorse its value in your fundraising materials.

Don't get too sidetracked by the unpopularity of the cause: you'd be surprised how many fundraisers I've met who've said their cause was very unpopular. They were right to some degree, but then when you hear similar complaints from fundraisers at some large and seemingly-successful charities, you do start to wonder. I'm just as guilty - at Amnesty International we would occasionally bewail the difficulty of getting across the concept of the death penalty's abolition as a fundraising theme.

I believe most causes could claim to be unpopular, but then that's why the charity or organisation was set up - to serve/champion the disadvantaged, secure improvements, and alleviate or eliminate poverty/ill-health/abuse etc.

I spent three years as sole fundraiser for a charity that provided development and emergency aid to Afghanistan, a country whose population was Muslim, which had been at war (including civil war) for over 10 years, and which was either ignored by the press or depicted as no longer of geopolitical significance now that the Russians had departed. I'd say those factors combined to make the appeal very unattractive to many people in the UK.

Anyway, you sound as if you've got a good range of sensible activities underway.

One half-serious idea. You mentioned "trying to make a 1980's leisure centre appealing". Forgive me if this has been suggested to you many times before, but is there any way you can pick up on the BBC TV comedy series The Brittas Empire? It was set in a 1980s leisure centre and was popular at the time. Can you interest any of the actors involved in promoting your service?

Hi there
I am a 'lone ranger' working for a leisure trust that has charitable status. I started in May 2004 and have been through some very low patches, mainly due to the isolation of my work and the huge cultural difference imposed on the staff that were once working for a local authority and now work for a much more commercially aware organisation. My organisation manages two leisure centres and an outdoor centre - facilities that traditionally have been managed by the local authority. After 6 months of a fair amount of angst, my priorities are:-
- raise the profile of the organisation through PR and public information campaigns
- create opportunities for volunteers, 'internal' and external fundraising
- develop local partnerships that increase our profile and thereby increase our 'sex-appeal' to potential funders
- small grant applications to support discrete projects within the centres i.e. linking with local housing assocaitionto support activity schemes for young people on housing estates
- large grant applications to supoprt capital projects
Trying to make a 1980's leisure centre appealing is like probably akin to being the PR manager for the Great White Shark society!
I would be interested to hear from anyone in similar posts to mine, or from anyone working for organisations that start off with a real image problem.

Hi Femina

I have now been in fundraising 8 years and I have always found that everyone has ideas how fundraising should be done but not many people are willing to actually implement them!

I am glad you are finding this forum useful, I am too. Although I do attend as many events, meetings etc as I can in order to network, I am sitting here in the office on my own the majority of the time and it is good to feel there are others out there who understand the responsibilities and difficulties of having the continued existence of your charity resting entirely on your shoulders!

Hi Wendy,

I am a lone fundraiser in our organisation. I do not do trusts and grants applications, as there is someone who does that. I have been employed to increase our individual donors/community fundraise/corporate fundraise/and manage a portfolio of events.
I too have worked out my strategy for the year ahead - and presented it to our trustees, pushing the point home that they have to 'buy in' and sometimes get involved. Now that I have a strategy, I am in the process of scoping out implementation.
I am new to fundraising, and one of the things I found daunting was the fact that everyone in the organisation had a view on how and why things should be done or not be done.
As a lone fundraiser, I do not have anyone to bounce my ideas off, so its great to have a forum such as this, and build up a network through this!
I have been in this job for about 12 weeks now, and feel like I am getting to grips with certain things, and still have a long way with other things!

femina

Wow, you have certainly accomplished a lot in 5 weeks and congratulations on doing so well on "Restoration" - I love that series.

Anyway, it sounds to me as though we are concentrating on pretty similar things. I have now been in post about 10 weeks and after finding out what the charity had done in the past, my first task was to draw up a strategy for the year ahead (am hoping to expand this to a 3 or even 5 year strategy in due course but I had to start somewhere!). The main thrusts of this are applications to trusts and PR.

We have been lucky enough to have some great articles in the Mail on Sunday in the past which brought in a great deal of money and gave us most of our 7,000 supporters. As that seems to work so well, I decided we need more of the same, both nationally and regionally. I have also done quite a few trust applications and have had some success already, although there aren't as many trusts giving to animal welfare as you might think.

I have also developed 3 new leaflets: fundraising, legacies and an introduction to the charity.

I am trying to develop corporate partnerships but am not finding it that easy, I guess there probably isn't as much in it for the company as there would be in a partnership with, say, yourselves.

I am also testing cold mailing as it is something the charity has never done.

I have also "inherited" 3 events to organise: a dinner in Bath in March, a dinner with one of our patrons as speaker in London in June and a fete in July.

I am also trying to form some volunteer fundraising groups to try and get out into the community but all the other stuff is keeping me very busy so I haven't got that far yet.

I do know what you mean about being seen to be effective, I keep a list of my achievements which I send to the trustees at the end of every month so they can see that it is worth my being here! It also helps to make me feel a bit better about being here!

Good luck with your project.

Hi Wendy

I am the only fundraiser here at Wentworth Castle (have been here 5 weeks), based just outside Barnsley (South Yorkshire). We are a new organisation (with 4 staff) - we finished in third place on the BBC2 TV series 'Restoration' in 2003.

All our energy has come from the publicity and interest generated by our appearance on the show. To date we have raised just short of £13M from the HLF, Learning and Skills Council and English Heritage.

My job is to take things forward. Our site (Wentworth Castle is in fact a house that dates back to 1729) surrounded by pleasure gardens and a wider parkland estate. The first challenge was to understand the heritage and ecology of the site. I then crafted a strategy, identifying some starting points:

Development of a membership scheme.
Designing fundraising/marketing materials
Undertake PR Initiatives to increase and build upon our credibility
Looking to develop partnerships with local and regional businesses
Researching Trust and other funding sources

It is hard work because I am starting from scratch, but am making progress on all these fronts. The bigger funders, such as Trusts are our priority (approaches after Christmas) because of the levels of funding required (another £2M) although we have a development officer starting soon, who will look at events.

Working on your own is hard because there is no other fundraiser to bounce ideas off. I think it is all down to self belief in your plans and your ability to get the job done. It is also about being seen to be effective – that you’re making a contribution to your new organisation. A lot of people think fundraising is some kind of black art…

These are my thoughts for now. Which areas are you focusing on?

Regards, Paul