Trustees should be involved in raising money for their charities so they can see how difficult it is, the chief executive of Macmillan told the Fundraising Live conference today.

Thomas was speaking this morning at the conference, organized by Civil Society Media and Fundraising Magazine, about how you should put fundraising at the heart of an organization.

Thomas, who was previously a fundraiser before she took up the role of chief executive, said that this is particularly important for trustees.

She said: “The Macmillan board of trustees are not just a brilliant bunch of people. They are really great at governance and have their specialist skills, and manage pretty large significant sums of money, but they are people who feel passionately about Macmillan as well.

“When you are recruiting a board of trustees, in general we want skills but we really want fit. We want people that have the ethos and understand the organization, because we are discussing fundraising at every single board meeting at the moment, and we are making really difficult decisions about fundraising. It is really helpful if the people who are helping make those decisions and shaping that have a good sense of what it takes to be fundraiser.”

She added that “if you really want people who understand and buy into fundraising, get the board to start doing things and actually start raising money. As much as anything else, it makes them realise quite how hard it is.

“We all know that fundraising is not easy, you have to ask people and you have to ask them and engage with them in the right way. I think we have got a very good set of trustees that are behind that.”

She said that for everyone that works at Macmillan, the starting point is helping people to defeat cancer.

Putting your ambition and mission at the heart of everything you do from a fundraising point of view really grounds you about what actually your purpose of doing things is.

She said: “I always say you are not raising money for money’s sake, you are raising money because this is what you need to do as an organization.”

Proud to be a fundraiser

Thomas also told the room of fundraisers that she is “really proud to call herself a fundraiser”.

She said: “I hope everyone in this room is proud to be a fundraiser too. It is sometimes challenging to hold on to that idea when I open the papers or listen to the radio and I don’t quite recognize some of the rhetoric that is being used.”

She added that she is proud because she is not raising money to put money into shareholders hands. She is raising money “to make the lives of two and a half million people currently living with a cancer diagnosis better”.

Thomas also mentioned the appeal started by Liz Monks, who worked as a fundraising director at a number of charities, who passed away last year after a battle with a cancer. Monks had wanted to raise £20,000 for Macmillan and the Royal Free Hospital before she died. That appeal has now raised over £50,000.

Thomas said that this shows that fundraising is more than putting money in a tin, or showing on your balance sheet. “That is about leaving a lasting legacy.”