Convention II. Post-
Thoughts drafted on the 2105 from Waterloo to Southampton, last Friday. Charity Chat #5.
Two issues of Charity Chat in two [working] days? Go on then.
This is a quick issue, with a few of my thoughts from the CIOF Convention last Friday, written on the train home . I took a lot of notes, but most were related to the specific circumstances of my clients. Here are a few that might have a more general appeal.
Don’t lose the donor by trying to upgrade them
Are you familiar with the Peter Principle? It’s when someone does well at a job, so gets promoted into a different job that they’re less suited to, and end up performing poorly as a result. Something similar can happen to donors in some organisations, when we promote them without considering the consequences.
Peter is a regular donor, giving £3,000 annually in response to your individual giving campaign materials and stewardship programme. He gets identified as a potential major donor, so gets recategorised and shifted over to the major donor “journey” managed by a different team who engage with him in a different manner to that which he is accustomed to. The hope is that the new style of comms increases his donation amount, but the actual result is a dip in donations as he’s no longer getting the information he used to enjoy.
The moral of this story (offered by one of the other delegates in the Q&A following a session on prospect research) is don’t hurry to scrap a successful engagement strategy with a donor, just because you’ve decided to recategorise them as belonging to a different category. It’s far better to carry on interacting with them in the manner that has been successful (and try other, additional activities to increase their donation level), than to risk losing them by changing everything.
Edge Zones
My favourite session, presented by Daisy O’Reilly-Weinstock of Good Innovation, was the one on the wisdom of nature when responding to change, and not being afraid of burning things that no longer work for you. It was a 45 minute session full of thought-provoking zingers, but in summary: we’re living in The Great Unmooring in which the structures that have been so constant since 1945 are all getting altered, destroyed or replaced. To carry on with business as usual (or, as fundraisers are often asked to do: LY+10%) just won’t cut it. When the game is changing, we need to change how we play it.
Nature is aware of this. An octopus will sever a trapped arm and grow a new one. A dead oak tree offers an environment for new life. Endings are not just OK, but vital, powerful and open the canopy so the light can nourish new shoots. Decay fertilises growth.
Stop scheduling that weekly meeting that serves no purpose. Stop letting the whims of one stubborn, noisy donor prevent you from altering a programme that is no longer fit for purpose. Stop using the last five years of data to define your next five years of strategy when the entire environment you operate in has changed. By all means, stick with the dead certs as that’s the responsible thing to do, but clear out the space to innovate alongside this and respond to the world as it is becoming, rather than continue with a model designed for the world as it was.
What would you stop doing if it meant you could try something new?
AI
Another note of praise to O’Reilly-Weinstock for reminding the room that “we have agency over AI.” It is not inevitable just because the market is willing it so. It is a tool and it is for us to choose how we use it (if at all). Related to this, Louise Morris of Summit Fundraising made the point that there’s a big difference between outsourcing everything to an AI system that offers an inauthentic version of your charity lacking in the humanity and personal touch that your donors connect to (unhelpful), and using smart automations that can help you speed up some of your workflows (helpful).
The session I chaired
A combination of lunch-time gnocchi, caffeine and nerves meant I felt a little iffy prior to the Future Funding panel session I hosted, but as soon as it began all that was forgotten and I felt fine. It was good fun. Jacqui Scott (HIWCF), Katherine Sellar (Postcode Lottery), and Robin Peake (Childs Charitable Trust) were generous with their insights into life behind the funding curtain, putting human faces to what can sometimes seem like an impersonal, transactional process: fill in a form, get rejected or get accepted, submit a report, repeat. The reality is that real people are assessing your application while trying to manage relationships with their own supporters/settlors/trusteesAnd the questions from the floor meant I had to say very little beyond nudging the conversation along. Thank you to the audience for engaging with us.
All under one roof raving
OK, we weren’t raving, but I won’t let that get in the way of sharing a Jamie XX song.
The point is, there’s strength in being part of the super-organism. I’m mostly a lone home worker, typically the solo fundraiser on a part-time contract for small charities. To be in central London, with other fundraisers, all under one roof, sharing our insights and experiences in a spirit of cooperation and mutual support, was a beautiful, powerful thing.
On that note, come and join a whole load of fundraisers and charity people, all under the roof of Portsmouth Guildhall later this year. The CIOF Central South Regional Conference 2026 is taking place from 0930 to 1700, on Wednesday October, at Portsmouth Guildhall. The theme is ‘Getting Ahead in Fundraising and Tackling Sector Challenges.’ The full line-up is still TBC, but it will include David Amos-Reeves on leadership and career progression, Paul Williams and Lucy Futter on collaboration in legacy marketing, and Jamie Feaver on successfully evolving how your charity works.
Earlybird tickets are available now, from a little over fifty quid: LINK
Thanks for reading
That’s all from me, for now. As always, if you’ve got anything you’d like me to share with the readers of Charity Chat, just let me know. Jobs, projects, news, opinions. Obviously I reserve the right to refuse to publish anything I don’t want to publish, but I am keen that this becomes about more than just me and my voice.
Happy fundraising!
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Missed my pre-Convention issue? Here it is…
No AI was used to write this. The header image is a digital scan of an analogue photo taken by me, on film, on a different trip to London a couple of years ago. Don’t steal my words or pictures. Thanks.