Major Gift

Congratulations to Third Sector (7 May issue) for its interesting report on women philanthropists - http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/login/807188/.

Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson, Labour and Conservative candidates for London's upcoming Mayoral election, have clashed over the value of charitable giving, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Hands up those who had heard of the White Ribbon Alliance before last week. Okay, let’s try hands up all those who wished they had – that’s me for one.

Having survived more than one recession as an anxious director of fundraising and as a confident consultant, I was tempted to ignore the likely consequences of the recent financial shenanigans.

Puzzle number one: Our Gallic hero didn’t set the money on fire, so it went somewhere. If, as claimed, it contributed to stock market falls; why didn’t its re-appearance in someone else’s pocket set up an equal an opposite rise in stock market prices? www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7208439.stm

Suddenly, everyone in the United States is talking about "time for change". No presidential hopeful can utter a sentence without the word. Not that anyone quite knows what they mean!!

Nonetheless, we could do worse than to adopt the mantra ourselves for fundraising in 2008. Time to do things a bit differently, time to be bold, time to make mistakes, time to lead rather than follow.