Fundraising Strategy: what do leaders need to do? Blog 1: first principles

This blog series is based on a session I presented at Fundraising Everywhere’s Charity Leadership Festival alongside Desiree D’Souza, Executive Director of Social Innovation and Social Impact at See Ability. In that session, available in full from Fundraising Everywhere here – and so also in this blog, we look at what fundraising leaders and the leadership team across charities need to do to develop and implement their organisation’s fundraising strategy successfully. We consider key issues such as how to get buy in, mitigating risk, and the importance of storytelling. We also consider the importance of focusing on team wellbeing, how to focus on the bigger fundraising picture and think about the time when you will pass the fundraising baton on to your successors. Here goes! What should our first principles be when thinking about fundraising strategy and leadership, Desiree? For me, the following starting points have always been my North Star and have held me in good stead across all of my roles: Who are we serving and what is that bigger picture of change that we're all collectively seeking to achieve? It was really heartening recently when I had a meeting with one of our donors and they said to us that what they admire the most about our work at See Ability is that we prioritise our time and resources to think about solutions that will make society more inclusive. That’s really ‘big picture’ – we aren't just working in this current timefra