Susanne Williamson

Perpetual Logo

The latest from London

As the recipient of the 2010 FIA Travel Scholarship – supported by Perpetual Trustees, Susanne Williamson shares her “takeaways” from the 2011 Institute of Fundraising National Convention.

IFC “buzz words” for 2011…

Integration
Choice
Transparency
Conversations

Susanne pictured in London with one of the 260 brightly painted model elephants created for the award-winning Elephant Parade campaign created by the conservation charity Elephant Family. The campaign won the Best Integrated Fundraising and Campaigning Organisation Award in 2011.

In 2010 I was a recipient of an FIA Travel Scholarship supported by Perpetual Trustees. It was thrilling to receive this scholarship and to have the opportunity to travel to London for the largest fundraising convention in Europe.

The Institute of Fundraising National Convention attracted 2300 delegates from the UK – and three representatives from the Antipodes! The Brits were astonished that I travelled for 26 hours to attend the convention. I can say it was worth the 3120 minutes of flying time (there and back).

First impressions

For a tiny island, the UK generates impressive numbers. There are 184,000 charities in the UK (of which an astonishing number seem to be hospices for the elderly and sanctuaries for ponies and donkeys).

The three-day conference involved more than 100 sessions covering nine tracks - community, events and volunteers; corporate fundraising; digital fundraising; direct marketing; legacies; major donor fundraising; personal effectiveness; bigger picutre; and trusts and statutory fundraising.

The first challenge is preparing your “convention survival strategy”. How to choose the sessions you will attend – by stream, topic, speaker, room number, flip a coin, cloning?

There is a dizzying array of information and opportunities. Some delegates eventually just selected their favourite room and waited to see who would arrive to make a presentation. I tried to be everywhere all at once and ended up coming a credible fifth in the Convention walk-a-thon, which was conducted by Activity4Charity. Check out their clever tracking site at activity4charity.co.uk.

Everyone was talking about...

Despite the vast number of sessions and topics, some things just kept coming up. In fact, everyone was talking about donor choice, charity transparency, measuring impact, integrated campaigns and donor-led communications.

The charities that were demonstrating best practice in these areas (and that were the talk of the convention) were KIVA, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, Cancer Research UK (MyProjects) and Water Aid.

Kiva is the world's first online lending platform connecting online lenders to entrepreneurs across the globe. You can make a loan to an entrepreneur across the globe for as little as $25. The website is dazzling (no wonder it has won Charity Navigator’s highest rating). I challenge you to visit this site – kiva.org – and not make a donation!

Breakthrough Breast Cancer won two prizes at the Convention and was involved in a third. The charity took the Best Use of Events award for its Go Pink event (yes, pink is a global movement) and was joint winner of the Most Innovative Fundraising Campaign award for its Too Many Women campaign, which raised more than $1 million.

MyProjects is an ingenious web portal which is attracting new supporters to Cancer Research UK. Donors can choose the type of cancer research that they wish to support and the geographic location of the researcher. The researcher updates the donor. This online fundraising approach has generated $900,000 in two years from 656 personalised fundraising pages.

Water Aid takes donors engagement to a whole new level by inviting donors to watch the drilling of their well via webcam.

If you love the idea of interactive giving, also check out donorschoose.org (funding individual school projects), wedidthis.org.uk and kickstarter.com (crowd funding the arts) and giveasyoulive.com (thousands of stores donating money to charity when you shop online).

Susanne’s special awards

Inspired by the IoF National Awards, I have created my own Conference Awards.

Here are the categories and the winners:

The “I wish it was in Australia” award

JustTextGiving (justtextgiving.co.uk)

Developed and launched at the conference by the Vodaphone Foundation this new fundraising portal will probably fulfil its marketing claim – fundraising will never be the same again.

Vodaphone has developed this new service which helps UK registered charities to raise money via sms. Donors can give up to $10 by texting a unique code. There are no commissions, no administration costs and no registration fees, and each unique six-digit identifying phone number is automatically linked to the charity’s bank account.

Text giving is targeted at the convenience-driven 18-24 year old market. In the UK currently 44 per cent of 18-24 year olds donate compared to 80 per cent of over-65 year olds.

The “That’s Astonishing Award”

Convention News

Every morning delegates received a freshly minted copy of the Convention News. This was a jam-packed 16-page newsletter capturing the key presentations from the previous day, including quotes and questions and answers.

The “Top Conference Tip” Award

The Top Tip Award goes to conference favourite, Adrian Sargeant from the Centre of Philanthropy at Indiana University. Adrian and Jen Shang, Professor of Philanthropy presented findings from their latest research which demonstrated the power of social comparison. If you ask a donor to join another donor (of the same gender) in making a gift, you can increase the commitment from an average of $86 to an average of $111.

It is as simple as saying (or writing)...we had another donor, Mary, who contributed $300 this year. We invite you to join this donor and make a pledge today.

My favourite session

Good2Great - Presented by Bernard Ross, Director of The Management Centre

Bernard is always an engaging and lively speaker and he had a lot of fun presenting some insightful material from the management classic: Good2Great.

Here are some classic quotes from Bernard:

Good is the enemy of great
Watch out for the OK Plateau
When in doubt, don’t recruit
Make sure the right person isn’t in the wrong seat
Give your best people the best opportunities
Confront the brutal facts
Identify your core competence by answering these questions
- What are you deeply passionate about?
- What can you be best in the world at?
- What drives your resource engine?

And finally – a tip from Bernard - every morning ask your team what specifically shall we do today to improve our results? This tip was runner up for the Top Conference Tip Award (see above).

Most inspiring speaker

Steve Chalke mbe, founder of the social action charity Oasis

Originally set up in 1985 to provide a hostel for homeless young people, Oasis now provides healthcare and housing in 10 different countries, run 12 schools through its sister charity, Oasis Community Learning and has almost 2000 staff, students and volunteers.

Steve made the decision to devote his life to breaking the poverty cycle when he was 14 years old. Not surprisingly he believes that vision is everything and that you need to feel constantly frustrated if you really want to do your job.

His favourite quote is from Plato – “We all live inside a story.” Steve believes in masterful stories.

He raised more than $5.4M from only three marathons for charity. He’s also a special adviser to the United National Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking, the founder of the parent initiative Parentalk, minister of a church called Church.co.uk in London and author of more than 40 books!

Steve was one of those speakers who makes you wonder: “Why aren’t I doing more with my life?”

Closing remarks

The experience of attending the National Convention was energising. It was wonderful to be out of the office (and 16,900 kilometres away) dedicating three action-packed days to learning from some outstanding fundraising professionals.

I think a conference of this size and scale needs to be tackled like an arts festival. It’s all about opening your mind to the experience and capturing the “a-ha” moments. I have a few tips for the next lucky scholarship recipient:

Do some preparation and pre-reading. I identified UK-based organisations of interest and then made sure I attended presentations by those fundraisers so that I could form a personal relationship and continue the dialogue post-conference.
I recommend using mind maps to capture key points from sessions. It is a faster way to record and remember the relevant information. This article has been compiled from a series of mind maps.
Attend the conference as though you are going to write a paper (and then go ahead and write a paper).
Listen for the buzz words. In 2011 these were integration, choice, transparency, conversations.

Finally thank you to the FIA and Perpetual Trustees for making an investment in professional development. I have worked as a fundraiser for more than 10 years. This was the first time I had the opportunity to attend an international conference. This opportunity reinvigorated my commitment to this challenging and too often unrecognised profession.

Susanne Williamson

Susanne Williamson EMFIA CFRE is currently General Manager, Fundraising at The Reach Foundation. Reach is passionate about young people recognising their unique strengths and getting the most out of life. Reach is best in the world at young people inspiring young people. Susanne has worked in senior fundraising roles for more than 10 years. In that time she has raised more than $20M for medical research and arts oganisations.

11 January 2012