New forum aims to raise profile of community fundraising

Fundraising | 1 Sep 2006

Macmillan Cancer Support, Cancer Research UK and WaterAid are among the first charities to sign up to an exclusive Community Forum launched this month by THINK Consulting Solutions.

Designed to help fundraisers maximise the full potential of community fundraising, the Forum has four objectives: to challenge sector thinking around the value of community fundraising, to elevate this area of fundraising; to establish a reliable benchmarking tool for community fundraisers; and to create a safe place for leading practitioners to learn, share, compare and support each other.

The Forum is to be headed up by Tony Elischer, managing director of THINK, and Ann Waizeneker, associate senior consultant at THINK and former community fundraising and volunteering director at Cancer Research UK.

Waizaneker said: 'While there are some valuable existing networks for grass-roots community fundraisers to meet and share their experiences, we believe that too often the work and worth of community volunteer fundraisers is overlooked at a strategic level. As a result many causes fail to maximise their potential. We believe there is a need for a detailed assessment of the actual and potential value of community fundraising and its contribution to the overall achievement of organizational objectives.'

Amanda Bringans, deputy fundraising director at Macmillan, said she hoped the forum would help raise the profile of community fundraisers. Very often it can be perceived that community fundraisers are not experts unlike major gift or DM fundraisers, which I completely disagree with. At Macmillan we recognise that we couldn't be as successful as we are without strong community participation and on this basis we have made it an integral part of our fundraising strategy.

At present, membership to the Forum is by invitation only and has been limited to just 11 organisations. However Waizaneker told PF that there was potential to extend membership in the future. 'We have decided to keep it quite small for the time being while we get it set up and work through our ideas,' she said. 'We also want it to be a space where people can talk confidentially and get their voices heard. It's not about keeping people out though and as the forum progresses we will definitely look at expanding it further.'

Directory: WaterAid | Cancer Research UK (CRUK) | Macmillan | THINK Consulting Solutions

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.