Collaboration with other sector organisations and building up a strong body of research on giving are a few of the early priorities of the Institute of Fundraising’s new chief executive.

Speaking to civilsociety.co.uk just eight days into his role,  Peter Lewis emphasised the importance of meeting and talking with members, but already seemed to have confident views on what makes for a good membership organisation and what priorities might crop up early in his post.

Lewis, who already has professional links to the likes of NCVO, welcomed the government’s emphasis on charities working together and said he would like to see other charity membership organisations work with the Institute to promote the Fundraising Codes of Practice.

“That’s got to be good for the sector as a whole,” he said.

Lewis said that he also wants to pull together research on giving – from demographics of giving to donor motivations – and will be calling for charities, academics and other organisations to share their research work on the subject in the near future. He said that once the Institute has collated all the existing research in a portal, (as has been on the cards at the Institute for some time) he would like it to commission research to help fundraisers.

“This is the kind of world the IoF should think about being in,” he said. “There seems to be a lack of genuine, high-quality research about giving and what works.”

He said research such as this would help fundraisers get better at targeting potential donors, so that they’re not targeting people who cannot afford to give.

Lewis expressed some interest in a public-facing campaign on giving, but said that this would require a lot of resource, and that in any event, “we need the research to be better first”.

His role as new chief executive, said Lewis, was not necessarily to “look at the books”, but to work on delivering the best training and membership for members.

Lewis beat dozens of other candidates to the role and was announced as the successor to Amanda McLean, who remained in post for only a few months, in the summer.