I know from experience that it is very easy to espouse what to do in fundraising, but it is much harder to do it in practice. Sometimes I find myself doing something which I know isn’t ideal but is the best that can be done with the time/resources available.

I’ve met a lot of fundraisers who hate picking up the phone, talking to donors and even asking for money and agree that investment in soft skills is key.

In many ways the theory is the easy part of fundraising, but looking someone in the eye and asking for a donation is something that most fundraisers could do with some help with!

As you say, I hope the IoF will address some of this in their training programmes…

Thanks

Craig

Not sure if you caught the latest episode of KnowHow NonProfit’s Milcaster Tales – and the responses, including one from me – that explores this? http://www.knowhownonprofit.org/millcaster/animated-millcaster/contract-what-contract-part-two-the-video

Everything you say strikes a chord with me. I’ve often thought that many ‘Direct Marketing fundraisers’, those that look after the large mailing, doordrop and insert programmes, and seldom get to look a ‘real donor’ in the eye, could learn an awful lot from Major Donor and Corporate fundraisers, who do exactly that on a regular basis, and have to make the ask for extremely large sums of money in person.

Sometimes I think it must be all too easy to forget – even, as you say, when people know the theory – that there is a real person on the receiving end of that letter or email that needs to receive a clear, emotive, well-argued and persuasive request to give. The result is too many mailings that look like they’ve been produced by a publishing house, with messaging that’s heavily compromised through a lengthy internal approvals process by people that never have had to make an ask for funds and don’t know what makes an ask work.

Thanks too for mentioning Lyndall – I’d love to meet her one of these days.

Btw, you have omitted the wonderful Lyndall Stein from your examples! Lyndall was Fundraising Director at Action Aid before becoming CE of Concern UK. She was recently interim CE of the Resource Alliance as well. So there are a few more examples out there, but sadly not enough.

I think some organisations – and even some that you don’t expect it of, freak out about costs, and don’t spend when they should. That means you end up with archaic systems, that don’t make it easy, or even possible to do something that should be easy.

And if some just spent the money, and time, on a decent system, they could send e-newsletters to those that wanted them, as often or not as they wanted them, with articles more likely to appeal to the person reading them.

or they could worry about the ratio.

(Some of course, at the moment, are simply worried about their survival until the end of the year), which is why charities need to invest when they can.

So for those who do care enough to do, and give, as well as say – we should be prepared to go the extra mile too.