Think Consulting Solutions » Opening the door to outside influence

Opening the door to outside influence
October 12, 2009
Della Weight
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I’ve often wondered why there’s so little exchange between the for profit and not for profit world? As an industry we are often good at exchanging ideas and sometimes even results – at national and international fundraising conferences, in seminars, training courses and other get-togethers of fundraisers and marketers. But its fairly rare that you’ll see a voice from outside the sector on the agenda.

A quick look at the International Fundraising Congress coming up next week reveals just 3 speakers (out of 75) who are representing something other than a charity or a charity supplier. The Swiss Fundraising Association’s fundraising day had no one speaking from outside the sector; neither did the UK’s national convention. Of course some of the speakers at these meetings may have worked outside the sector in another life and many will reference commercial marketing knowledge.

But why the lack of external ideas and challenge to our charity thinking? Is it because we think we have nothing to learn from commercial marketing or research? Or because its too difficult to secure the participation of the leading lights from other industries? Are we more comfortable washing around the same old knowledge from within our world? Or do outsiders just charge too much to present?

And are we missing out?

My personal view is yes! When I look back to things that have made a impact on me as a fundraiser they have often come from outside; insights into the psychology of giving from an American professor of psychology, a presentation on membership Manchester United style by their head of marketing, an hour with the Body Shop in a painfully honest appraisal of how poor charities are at cause related marketing – I could go on.

All of these were sessions that made we either go away and do my job differently or changed the way I think about fundraising. And to be honest although I’ve seen some good charity presentations over the years – I’m hard pressed to think of one that has had the same impact.

Its easy to do what other charities do – its hard to innovate, so let’s challenge ourselves to think beyond what’s already tried and tested by our colleagues in our markets and grab new ideas or learning wherever it comes from.

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 and is filed under Charities, Charity Trends, Corporate Fundraising, Digital, Higher Education, Individual Giving, Recession. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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3 Responses to “Opening the door to outside influence”

#1 by Melvyn Gattinoni on October 13th, 2009

You’re right of course when it comes to European meetings, but it got me thinking that this not so much the case in Latin America (I’m not sure abut the US). It is quite frequent to find business leaders speaking in local or country-specific seminars and workshops related to fundraising. Not so much on the Hemispheric Fundraising Congress, though. I guess it has to do with the developing awareness of CSR throughout the Region and businesses trying to position themselves. Nevertheless, it’s true that it’s not at all frequent to have people from other areas such as the ones you mention (psychologists, sociologists, media etc.).
#2 by Howard Lake on October 13th, 2009

You’re right, Della, and I agree it’s not healthy for the sector. Equally, I’d quite like to see leading charity sector staff getting invited to speak at for-profit industry seminars and conferences. I fear that the parochialism is not restricted to the charity sector.

Your post caught my eye because it was earlier today that I decided to do something about this in my area of work: I have just arranged to run some joint Twitter training courses with another speaker whose focus is exclusively on the for-profit commercial sector. I’m hoping that our two different approaches will yield some valuable lessons for the charity staff that will attend.

Our challenge then is to sell the same approach to the commercial sector. I wonder how that will go down.
#3 by Matt Ide on October 14th, 2009

I totally agree. As a prospect researcher we have one foot very firmly in the for-profit world when dealing with things like wealth and profiling, so it’s important for prospect researchers to understand things like how businesses work, salaries, corporate giving etc. As a member of the IoF’s Researchers in Fundraising committee, we try to always have at least one ‘outside’ speaker to give a conference perspective. This year we have Martin Tomkinson, an investigative financial journalist who has previously worked on the Sunday Times Rich List. If we continue to focus internally, not only do people often get bored hearing the same things, but we aren’t giving ourselves the opportunity to learn new things and new perspectives. This is increasingly important because the charity sector is being challenged to take on board more and more business-oriented methods to be successful, particularly with regards to philanthropy and individual giving.