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Fundraising | Jonathon Grapsas | 16 Jul 2009

I was lucky enough to spend last week at the IoF National Convention in London.  I even ran a session on how to get to know your donors better and then use that insight to build rapport and raise more money.  

As I waited for the first participants to arrive (it was the night after the party after all) I chatted to the volunteers who were helping run the session.  Most of them were from small charities – a lone fundraiser or working as part of a small and multi-tasking team responsible for a host of activities.   

It became vividly clear to me that very few sessions I attended had acknowledged the majority of people in the room work in small teams and would have appreciated a steer on how to turn ‘look at what we’ve done’ into core principles, actions and ideas that could be adapted by fundraisers working with few resources. 

Now I know it is our responsibility as the audience to be using the sessions to generate our own ideas.  But I had been a lone fundraiser during my time at the Australian Museum. And I’ve provided mentoring and consultancy to small and start up fundraising teams through my work at Pareto Fundraising.  Working with small budgets and big expectations can be terrifying, thrilling, dynamic and frustrating. 

At a recent IWRM conference in India, my colleague, Sean Triner, worked with eight or so fundraisers to support them while they wrote their own fundraising appeal letter in the session.  By the end, the attendees had been shown the principles of direct response and had the chance to apply it to their own organisation by getting a letter ready to go out in the mail.  My hunch is the learning from that session will stick with those fundraisers and their organisations for years to come.   

So, I’m challenging myself and those of you who run or speak at conferences in future to see more conference sessions and speakers specifically briefed to ensure their session outcomes aren’t just about ‘show and tell’ but also meet the challenge of thinking about what are the learning outcomes they want to convey.  And giving the audience some time and help to consider how that idea could be translated to their particular situation.  

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Directory: Institute of Fundraising
Who's Who: Jonathon Grapsas