Fundraising hits £2 million mark for new hospice in Ipswich

Today we are featuring a fantastic achievement in fundraising.

The Treehouse Appeal begun by East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices in March will result in a new hospice for children with life threatening conditions and their families in Ipswich. The site is green and spacious, and the hospice will be full of modern resources, increased capacity and privacy.

http://www.each.org.uk/how-to-help/treehouse_appeal/what_is_treehouse_appeal

This is the kind of news that makes it easy to see why so many people want a career in fundraising. We feel it’s extremely important to highlight the amazing work fundraisers do.

So the Treehouse Appeal is doing very well – leave us a tweet or a comment about your fundraising campaigns too!

Tim Wiltshire

Institute of Fundraising Academy

From Good to Great

Take time to consider your fundraising skills and responsibilities.

Career development is often dependent on networking, qualifications and experience, but if you can score well in your competencies you will find that your abilities make you a highly marketable fundraiser.

At the Institute we like to offer our members an Individual Training Needs Analysis to assess their strengths and weaknesses, and therefore encourage them to make improvements to develop their careers.

One example of this was a call we made to a member who wanted to become a freelance fundraising consultant, yet she lacked experience in certain areas of fundraising. As such when we ran through her competencies some of her scores were low and provided us with an opportunity to discuss her career direction.

On one hand she could attempt to gain further experience with her current employer by asking for responsibilities in fundraising areas she has yet to develop skills within. Alternatively a qualification could provide her with the knowledge to expand into these areas. She could take the Certificate or Diploma in Fundraising to gain a broad insight into all areas of fundraising, or with a Masterclass she could focus on whichever specific area she requires.

Don’t be afraid of writing down all the attributes and responsibilities required in your current job role and the job roles you are aiming for in the future. Score yourself from 1 to 10, decide which scores to improve and take yourself from good to great.

Tim Wiltshire
Institute of Fundraising Academy

Public Library closure threat means more call for Professional Fundraisers

The potential public library closures as a combined result of public spending cuts and reduced usage have been in the news this week.

In response to this, the third sector will surely be called upon to combat the closures.  Closing something so integral to the community as a library will not go down lightly.  Fundraising professionals should be prepared to offer consultancy or to develop their own responses to these closures.

This might mean that as fundraisers we are entering areas they we have never worked on before, which can be intimidating.    

As we enter an even longer period of financial uncertainty, more and more factions of private and public sector industries will look to the third sector for assistance to help them retain their donors, uphold their causes and obtain new clientèle.  

Learning new skills that will contest brutal spending cuts will be a worthy investment for third sector organisations.  The time for standing still has passed; if we are to flourish we must develop and counteract. 


Take your learning to new levels - enter in our Academy courses for the opportunity to develop your career while assisting with causes you feel strongly about.  Personal Effectiveness Courses from the Academy help identify specific training needs and apply them to your chosen industry:


http://www.institute-of-fundraising.org.uk/iofacademy/get+qualified/professional-courses/personaleffectiveness/

Sarah Bradley 

Institute of Fundraising Academy