Finance departments do not understand fundraising well enough, and the two functions must work together to manage the board and chief executive, delegates at the Charity Finance Group annual conference heard yesterday.
Rohan Hewavisenti, who was director of finance and business development at the British Red Cross until recently, said that "some finance directors do not understand fundraising", and instead focus too much on ratios and percentages.
He said finance directors need to spend more time with fundraisers to understand what they do, and should attend fundraising conferences in order to learn.
Hewavisenti, who last month joined RNIB as group director of resources, said that finance and fundraising directors need to ensure they have close relationships. He said it was necessary for this to happen before the two functions could start challenging each other.
He was speaking alongside Mark Astarita, director of fundraising at the British Red Cross, on how fundraising and finance teams can work together.
Hewavisenti said the two functions often needed work together to “manage upwards” to convince the board and the chief executive. He said one of the biggest mistakes the two functions made was disagreeing publicly over certain matters, which meant the board and the chief executive were less likely to back their ideas.
Astarita echoed the need for the two departments to get on.
He said: “Combined team effort makes all the difference, I think put us both in a room and we are formidable. It would be difficult to argue with if you are harmonising. If your fundraising and finance people are talking the same language, looking to achieve the same outcome, you really can convince your boards and chief executive to do anything. And that is the way to manage upwards.”
Generosity 'over-priced'
Astarita also said that fundraisers had fallen into the habit of asking for too little money, and were making the British public feel more generous than they really were.
He told delegates that the “idea of generosity is something we need to tackle”, adding “you can save the world and cure cancer for £15 per month? Really?”.
He said that we have “possible over-priced generosity”.
He said: “No-one did anything wrong in getting there, because £2 and £3 works and you get volume. But the problem is we’ve made that a cultural norm and I think that is going to be difficult.”
He went on to say that “there is very little inflation in giving”, which is a challenge for both fundraising and finance departments. He said: “The next time we will get inflation in giving is when the £5 note goes, and £10 will become the norm. The sooner it goes the better.”
Astarita has previously made similar comments, last year criticising a “Primark” approach where charities do not ask for enough money.
He examined the difference between the sizes of donations given in America, which he said for fundraisers “is a dream”, where charitable giving is “embedded in their culture”.
However, he added religion has a lot to do with it, and that it is “great if you have got God on your side”. He said that fundraising is a lot harder now that there are more atheists in the UK.
He said: “About 50 per cent of Americans go to church every day I think, or whatever it is, and that really makes a difference.”
Astarita also told delegates that most charities in the UK are not spending enough on fundraising.
He said the British Red Cross is spending more on fundraising than a decade ago, and that it had benefited from doing so.
"We are a lot richer now then had we not invested," he said. "There are charities around that didn’t invest when they should have done and we are bigger than them now, when they were bigger than us back then.”
