Kew Foundation snaps up Royal Society's development director

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 24 Nov 2009

The Kew Foundation, the charity that fundraises for Kew Gardens, has recruited the Royal Society’s top fundraiser as its most senior executive.

Michael Murphy joined the Foundation last week in the role of director of development after three years at the Royal Society. It is effectively the charity's top job.

The Foundation’s last permanent chief executive, Lucy Blythe, left the Foundation to go into consultancy. The joint interim CEOs, Shannon Callahan and Elizabeth Dixon, have returned to their previous roles as head of major gifts and head of knowledge management.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is a non-departmental public body that receives half of its funding from Defra and has to raise the other half from other sources. The Kew Foundation, an independent registered charity, contributes around £8m or 11 per cent of Kew’s total income, raising it from trusts and foundations, major donors, corporates and Kew Gardens members.

Murphy said he was attracted to the role by Kew’s reputation as a “global conservation institution that helps the world to adapt to and mitigate climate change”.

“Of course it’s also a beloved institution by the public but it was its work on climate change that really swayed me,” he said.

He is planning a comprehensive fundraising campaign of the likes Kew has not seen before, he said. “They’ve done smaller campaigns for projects like the seed bank or a new building, but nothing that ties it all together in the same way that the Royal Society or a major university would do.”

While at the Royal Society Murphy oversaw a £100m capital campaign to celebrate its 350th anniversary which starts this Friday. When he left earlier this month the target was “99.5 per cent met”, he said.

Before that he fundraised for City University Education Trust in Dublin and worked at various educational and cultural institutions in his native US.

Directory: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

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