ChangeFundraising Has Moved!

This blog has moved to changefundraising.com!

Please update your bookmarks, as the new site is where I'll be at from now on with blogs, podcasts, vlogs, random projects and all things charity fundraising related.

If you don't have bookmarks to update then I highly recommend getting bookmarks. They're like physical bookmarks that we use in books. But maybe you prefer to fold over the corner of your page rather than use a bookmark...which is OK. Unless you do a massive corner fold taking up as much of the page as physically possible. If you're one of those people then I don't want you to visit my new website.

The 4 Reasons Your Fundraisers Leave

You've probably read a lot of articles on why the turnover of fundraising staff is so high. A friend asked me the same thing recently as her charity has just lost yet another fundraising manager. I replied, and then I shared my reply on LinkedIn...and a lot of fundraisers agreed.

So here - in my opinion - are the 4 reasons your charity's fundraising staff keep leaving:

1. Fundraisers  are under appreciated, and the rest of the charity generally looks at them as a 'necessary evil'.
   
2. Often the rest of the organisation don't respect it as a job or believe that it's a profession. I've never seen any other job where so many outside people with no experience are as happy to tell you everything you're doing is wrong.
   
3. Fundraisers often aren't supported in their own training and qualifications. That's probably because, again, it's not seen as a real job. If your manager and Board believe fundraising is guesswork and witchcraft then why would they pay for you to go on a fundraising course?
   
4. It's lovely that charities want to change the world, but one of the results of that is one of my pet peeves: a fundraising target which is "as much as possible". Besides being unrealistic it's demotivating. Your reward for raising €1 million last year? A €1.3 million target.

6 Great Charity Singles

Make a cup of tea and spend 25 minutes watching these...

1. The best of them all comes from Flight Of The Conchords

2. Brett Domino's How To Make A Charity Single

3. Not strictly a charity single, but I like Pulp's Bad Cover Version

4. The Simpsons' Sending Our Love Down The Well

5. USA For Africa's We Are The World. Everyone who matters is in this video.

6. Band Aid 20's Do They Know It's Christmas? My secret shame is that this is my favourite version.

Which Fundraising Disney Princess Are You?

Have you ever wondered what Disney princess you’d be? Or what kind of fundraiser? Well this quiz (constructed by me, Rory Green and Steven Shattuck) ANSWERS BOTH!

I got Mulan - the Small Shop Fundraiser.

Who will you get?

Take the quiz here!

Who Is Going To Win The Irish Fundraising Awards?

So the shortlist for the Irish Fundraising Awards was just announced. You can read it here - it's a great resource to get ideas, read real results, and just get inspired.

While I'm reasonably impartial, I have to say I'm delighted to see Tony Ward from Fighting Blindness shortlisted for an award. And I'm very happy to see Concern's Direct Dialogue team get shortlisted - I always thing face-to-face fundraisers are completely overlooked and undermined in our sector.

The whole shortlist is full of lovely people - many of whom I've had the pleasure to work with.

It should be a great night and I hope you're attending.

Now...to make it more interesting...I've launched the First Annual Irish Fundraising Awards Sweep.

Can you correctly predict the winners of the Irish Fundraising Awards 2015 from a selection of the categories? 

It'll cost you a €5 donation to enter! You can pay your fee here: http://www.oneinfour.ie/help-us/ 

Half of all entry fees will go to the person with the most correct guesses.The other half will be donated to the amazing charity One In Four.

You can enter here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3GJDHT2

And you can pay your entry fee here: http://www.oneinfour.ie/help-us/

Good luck!

Top Fundraising Blog Posts Of 2014

Like any good blogger, I'm shamelessly collating my top blog posts from 2014 in to a new blog post of its own. Not only does it give us an additional post to drive traffic to, it also bumps up traffic to the original 5 blog posts. Overall, 'clicks' are the drug of the modern world - it's a pathetic attempt at increasing visitors and views in a growing effort to monetise this blog and finally allow me to buy Fantastic Four #48.

So here are my most read blog posts of 2014:

1. Everything I Know About Fundraising In One Slide
"People Donate Emotionally. Keep It Simple. It’s Not About You. Make A Personal Connection. Ask. Transparency, Obviously."

2. Restorative Fundraising
"Think about whether you are doing something to someone, for someone, with someone, or not doing it at all."

3. #NoMakeUpSelfie - What Should Your Charity Learn From It?
"For every #NoMakeUpSelfie there are a million efforts that raised nothing."

4. GUEST BLOG: Why Everyone Loses Over the World Vision Controversy
"When charity becomes more about promoting an ideology than helping people, everyone loses."

5. The Obligatory #IceBucketChallenge Blog Post - Criticism of Criticisms
"You're allowed to find fun in everything as long as it's not at the expense of others. Jesus, otherwise what's the point of anything?"

A Look Back At Irish Fundraising In 2014

Well, I'm glad to get that year over and done with. What a nightmare. Here were the fundraising highlights of 2014:

CRC Scandal Spills Over
We'd hoped the scandals of 2013 would die down a bit, but the coverage continued in to the New Year and beyond. The newspapers revealed a €700k pay out to the retiring CEO and every charity suffered.

Rehab, Angela and Frank
More Rehab scandals which caused a further loss of trust in charities. Angela Kerins stepped down. Frank Flannery did what Frank Flannery does. And nobody paid much attention to the real numbers behind the Rehab scratch cards.

SEPA Deadline Extended 6 Months
The new direct debit processing requirements were delayed 6 months because nobody really knew what they were doing. We're still figuring it out, and Irish charities are still working out the costs of extra processing and an increase in rejected DDs.

Charity Regulator Announced
We got our Irish Charity Regulator. Yay! And then we slowly realised that it's going to take years to figure out what a charity is and how many exist. Fundraising sits down the bottom of the list, and the new regulator hinted that it might not be on the list at all.

1% Difference Campaign Results
The 1% Difference Campaign published some results and found that donations to charities had declined (not their fault, of course). The -50% Difference Campaign still simmers.

AccountingForCharities.ie
With good intentions, Ireland's first 'charity comparison website' launched. Of course, these comparison sites don't make any sense, and maybe that's why it hasn't taken off yet.

#NoMakeUpSelfie and Other Selfies
Charities tried to capitalise on the latest trend of taking a photo of your own stupid face. One of the campaigns worked really well and all the rest flopped. Nobody knew why but it gave us all something to blog about (like here). Isn't that what's really counts?

The Charity Regulator Board Announced
We got ourselves a Charity Regulator Board. And Alan Shatter resigned (loudly making a donation to a charity that doesn't publish their salaries)

New Face-to-Face Fundraising Code of Conduct
The IFFDR regrouped and relaunched. The priority was to rewrite the Code of Conduct for street, door, and private site fundraising.

Fundraising Site Costs Went Up
Costs begin to sneak up for on-line fundraising portals. The good news is Sponsor.ie stayed at 4% (with no registration or annual fees), and we even had a Fee Free April!

George Hook At The Irish Fundraising Awards
As Ronan Ryan put it: "This is one of those 'were you there?!'  moments in my fundraising career"

#IceBucketChallenge
Jonathan Waddingham invented the great phrase of Meme-raising to explain these campaigns that charities have little or no control over. But again, it gave bloggers lots of fodder to pretend they know what they're talking about (like here and here).

GoodCharity.ie
Working with Fundraising Ireland, The Wheel, Dochas and Whitebarn Consulting, we launched GoodCharity.ie. It was amazing.

IFC Holland, One In Four and CFRE
Although my personal life was pretty much a disaster, I was delighted to get to speak at IFC Holland (#TeamJohann), to start working with One In Four, and to achieve my CFRE.

#GivingTuesday
Whatevs.


Any other highlights?