Josh is a world-leader in fundraising analytics, and talks in the interview about how not-for-profits can use analytics to raise more, more effectively, how to move toward data-driven prospecting for philanthropy and regular giving, and the future of fundraising innovation.
The interview is available as an audio file to download here: https://soundcloud.com/benrymer/josh-birkholz-interview-fund-raising-voices
Lucy is an innovation expert who works with charities to improve their ability to innovate and raise funds. She tweets at @LucyInnovation.
Lucy makes the point that innovations are unlikely to give returns within financial year; so the pipeline of new innovations needs to a) be well populated and b) have a multi-year strategy/budget. The challenge isn’t to not ‘fail’, it is to make your innovation process robust enough to withstand ‘failure’, for senior leadership to make failure something people are happy to discuss and mull over, and to spread the attitude that discussing failure is not a bad thing. It is the case though that we become invested in our ideas, and sometimes lose our willingness to accept that something isn’t working.
Every charity wants to innovate. However, leadership and culture are critical. A culture of innovative practice doesn’t come about without examples from the top, especially as it can be difficult for more junior staff to say “that project I worked on absolutely tanked” if they are worried that it will be perceived badly by their superiors. The whole organisation must be behind a change to innovative practices or it is likely to fail. We discussed the example of shoe company Zappos, who pay staff to leave if they are not happy. As founder Tony Hsieh says in a fascinating article about his sale of the business to Amazon, “I believe that getting the culture right is the most important thing a company can do”.
For prospect research and insight, its interesting to consider the role of “translators”. These are the people in organisations who draw out the narratives from information and present the story. For researchers, this is a key skill, and is really important in modern, information-rich/time-poor organisations. And Lucy is clear that “you can’t do innovation without insight”. Building and using a base of evidence for new products and projects, and evaluating existing work, is absolutely essential in the innovation process. While “creativity means not copying“, creativity and innovation rely on learning from experience and incorporating this learning into future work.
Ken has won many accolades, including the Institute of Fundraising’s ‘Lifetime Contribution’ award, and being named, in 2011, the most influential person in British fundraising. He has also acted as a Trustee of ActionAid and the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), as well as writing many books and articles on fundraising, including the classic ‘Relationship Fundraising’. He tweets at @kenburnett1, and his website, featuring ‘Relationship Fundraising’ and new book ‘Storytelling Can Change the World’, is here.
Ken’s passion is using communications to build strong relationships with supporters. For more on this, see Ken’s recent blog posts, and series on ‘The Future of Fundraising’, available here, which describe some of the barriers facing charities in building enduring relationships with their donors. Some of those covered in the interview, are:
Ken calls his “greatest heresy” the assertion that the CRM revolution which swept through fundraising in the 1980’s and 1990’s was a mis-step. He says: “we’ve become very professional…but donors want to be inspired by people who are every bit as passionate as they are”, adding that many charities struggle to build lasting relationships with supporters as, while “our organisations were founded in anger”, many have become slick and professionalised, sometimes losing, in their communications, the sense of outrage which moved their founders to create them, and which drives donors to support them.
Lots more in the interview. Hope you enjoy it.
(Fund) Raising Voices 