“Say it out loud. We are not alone” – day 2 at Institute of Fundraising North East conference
Executive summary: Another great day in regional fundraising conference land! I’m typing this blog on the train back from Newcastle to London so I can capture the learning for myself as soon as possible, and of course for you, dear readers.
First up, after another excellent plenary which had us out of our seats and jiggling about like nobody was watching, was Helen Duncan of University of Hull, talking about reflexivity and major donor fundraising.
Helen is a great presenter, and I got a real sense of why she must also be an excellent fundraiser too, because she expertly built a rapport with her audience. I particularly liked her emphasis on listening to their motivations, rather than behaving like a fact spewing automaton when meeting supporters. My notes are here:
Helen Duncan of University of Hull is presenting on reflexivity (making the familiar strange) in relation to major gift fundraising. Interesting subject.
Interesting side note from Helen with regard to the #NonGraduatesWelcome campaign. When recruiting front line fundraisers, charities often forget that they have back office staff under their noses who could transfer, as she did.
Can you tap into the passions of people in your organisation and become their mouthpiece?
Great point: you don’t have to have encyclopediac knowledge of your organisation when meeting a supporter. You might end up gabbling and spewing facts anyway. Stop. Ask. Listen. “What are your motivations for giving?”
Reflect on your meetings. Meet with and listen in particular to lapsed donors. Agree that “that’s rubbish” if they’ve not been well treated previously. Good point about trial gifts too. “Try before you buy.”
What three things can you do each day to move your donor pool forward? State a date when you’re available, not “let me know when you’re free.” Don’t procrastinate. Get on with meeting people.
Then it was off to hear James Gadsby Peet, who delivered a powerhouse of a presentation on resilience. More matrixes than you can shake a stick at, plenty of academic and personal research, gravity and great humour abounded. Please click through and read at your leisure. I tried to capture as much as possible of it. James wasn’t even put off by my water bottle exploding halfway through, so hats off to him, is all I can say. My notes are below:
Resilience isn’t about just getting on with the job! Shout out from James Gadsby Peet to the Roffey Park Institute resilience model.
Acquiring skills is a journey. Most training gets us from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence. How do we get eventually to unconscious competence?
Be kind to yourself.
How you feel on Sunday night is a pretty good indicator. If you have to change shoes when you get to work it may not be a good fit!
Reflect. Nothing beats just having a go at something. Teach, write, give presentations.
How do you move up this triangle in your interaction with others? And can you do it quickly?
Love a matrix. James is not disappointing here! So much content!
Coaching can be a really valuable resource. You are bought in because you come up with your own solution.
Back to this chart. Can you think of who plays these roles for you, not necessarily in your team? Any gaps?
I hadn’t had my fill of bearded men talking about personal resilience, so I decided to head off at this point to see Simon Scriver deliver another cracker.
Simon speaks from experience and from the heart on why fundraising can be a wonderful job, but why it can also bring so much stress. He made us laugh, he made us wince, and he made us laugh again. But above all, he made some incredibly pertinent points about the importance of fundraisers in charities. Another banging presentation – check out my notes below. It’s so worth it.
“When you have a good day, fundraising is the greatest job on the world. When you have a bad day, it can be the worst.” The timescales are not aligned. Hard to vent because people think it’s rewarding.
Simon Scriver on fundraiser mental health and self care.
The public want their money to go directly to the cause. But that doesn’t make sense!
If you spend £100 million on advertising the fact that you donate £5 million to good causes…
Simon struggles with corporate fundraising, it’s fair to say.
Rejection and failure are hard to take.
Fundraising is like a pie eating contest where the prize is more pie. Simon on how tough it can be to switch off.
Feeling low about fundraising? Now Simon is going to bring it round! 1. Looking after yourself is not a selfish act! It’s self preservation so you can continue to help others.
2. CBT can help break destructive vicious cycles. How do we do it? Identify your stressors. What works for you to break the cycle? Find your own menu of things that will help you recover and think logically about how you can fix things.
Social media can cause depression. Learn how to use or control it or shut it down.
Make time to do nothing!
Celebrate success and remind yourself of good feedback to anchor yourself. “Stop comparing your inside to someone else’s outside.” “No adult really knows what they’re doing. Everyone is struggling in this world.”
Connecting is so important. Say it out loud. You are not alone.
And finally:
“Some days it’s OK if you only help one person. And some days it’s OK if that person is you.”
The final presentation I attended was quite a contrast to the preceding two, moving from emotional resilience to data and CRMs – but it was no less valuable.
Katie Cagney and Sophia Stovall from Tyne and Wear Archive and Museums spoke about their journey towards developing a truly integrated CRM system that would work for them. My notes are below.
“Good data is imperative”
Power BI is a great way of sharing information derived from your crm, especially if you don’t have a powerful reporting tool within it.
Databases are moving to a cloud platform.
So many of your organisational aims come to life if you use data well.
Interesting results from regional survey of arts organisations:
IoF survey: Raisers Edge leads way with big organisations in terms of numbers of users; donorfy and etapestry with smaller orgs. Donorfy highest rated.
Inspirational quote section: You don’t want your information system to be bogging you down. It is worth investing time into.
Fair to say I think that the process is in safe hands. They spoke with such passion about the importance of good usable and applicable data in their organisation as well as a great understanding of how the improvements will eventually impact on the working lives of their colleagues and ultimately improve their effectiveness. That was a long sentence, so here is a short one.
So there you have it. Another great day at an excellent conference. I’ll leave you with Simon’s words, because I loved meeting other delegates and learning from them in between sessions, as much as I loved the sessions themselves. This is what conferences should be about.
Connect. Say it out loud. We are not alone.
