Who needs a fundraising professional?

If you are Trustee of a small charity (annual income £1.5 million or less), do you really need a fundraising professional on your executive team ?

I mean, we can all fundraise, can’t we ?  It’s like sales and marketing, really. After all, we’ve all run a tombola or shaken a tin outside Tesco. Anyone can do it – no prior skills or knowledge necessary. Just get someone with “transferable skills”.

Or maybe not ?

No charity would dream of retaining a solicitor who has no legal qualifications or an accountant who is not ACA or CIMA, however many “transferable skills” they might possess from a previous employment. The Law Society has a 3-tier examination system for would-be solicitors. For fundraising professionals, the Chartered Institute of Fundraising and CFRE International offer formal training and qualifications. So why hire someone in a key area of any charity’s sustainability who has no qualifications for the role ?

A small charity I know decided to dispense with the part-time services of a fundraising consultant and appoint a salaried fundraiser. As the charity was looking to expand its fundraising beyond grant-making trusts and the National Lottery, this move made good sense. Unfortunately they then proceeded to hire a former journalist on the basis of his good corporate contacts in the area. The result of this was an increase of interest in the charity amongst local businesses – which was sadly unmatched by financial support; and a drop in funds from grant-making trusts from around £80,000 p.a to £20,000. This has had severe long-term consequences for the charity concerned.

This is not to suggest that fundraising professionals always get things right. Earlier this century I was running a major capital campaign for a hospice. A group of ladies approached me and said they wanted to produce and sell a calendar (yes, one of those !) in aid of the campaign. I wasn’t keen: first, I didn’t think the project would make much money – a fairly critical point if fundraising is your business. Secondly, I wasn’t sure that semi-naked ladies fitted with end-of-life care. I was concerned that some members of the public might see this as trivialising the hospice’s work – and it only needed 3 or 4 such people contacting to the local media to put a major spoke in our fundraising wheel. However, the ladies were not for turning – and they persuaded the Chairman that this should go ahead. I felt that at £10 a calendar, they’d be lucky to raise £500 – so I urged them to try and get the photography and printing free – which they did. The calendar actually raised over £10,000 and went on selling into the next year. I made sure I bought the ladies an appropriate gift !

So: trained professionals or enthusiastic amateurs ?

What do you think ?

Written by Jimmy James