What does return on investment actually look like in corporate fundraising — and what can the numbers tell us about strategy? In this episode, host Simon Scriver brings together Caroline Richardson (Lark Owl) and Andy King (Fireside Fundraising) to dig into Caroline’s latest benchmarking research on corporate partnerships. What does return on investment actually look like in corporate fundraising — and what can the numbers tell us about strategy?
They explore why more charities than ever are doing corporate fundraising, what the data reveals about success rates (including why 50% of respondents had a 100% success rate — and why that’s not necessarily the full story), and how ROI for corporate partnerships is trending. Caroline and Andy also unpack the key strategic difference between a high-volume and a quality-over-quantity approach, why corporate fundraising has more in common with major gifts than trusts, and why it’s very much a team sport.
Caroline and Andy also discuss:
– ROI
– Percentage of charities actually doing corporate fundraising
– Success rates
– Differences between large and small charities
– Differences between 2025 and 2026
- Caroline’s newsletter, The Nest Egg
- Fireside Fundraising research on why companies give
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to hit follow and enable notifications so you’ll get notified to be first to hear of future podcast episodes. We’d love to see you back again!
And thank you to our friends at JustGiving who make the Fundraising Everywhere Podcast possible.
Transcript
Jade Cunnah: Welcome to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast, your go-to place for fundraising tips and inspiration. Love what you hear? Get more insights straight to your inbox. Subscribe to our email list for exclusive fundraising resources, early access to training, special discounts, and more. Just head on over to fundraisingeverywhere.com/podcast to subscribe.
Jade Cunnah: Now, on to today’s episode. Enjoy.
Simon Scriver: Hello, and welcome everyone to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. Yes, this is the Fundraising Everywhere podcast, but once in a while we stream these live on, uh, LinkedIn and YouTube. So you might be watching us from LinkedIn, you might be watching us from YouTube. Uh, if you are joining us live today, please do feel free to comment.
Simon Scriver: Please do feel free to add questions. Please feel free to share your own experiences as we get into this and chat. But you may be listening back on the podcast, and that is good. You are very welcome, as always, to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. My name is Simon Scriver. I am one of the co-founders of Fundraising Everywhere, and I have two of my favorite people in the sector here today to chat to each other.
Simon Scriver: I’m not even gonna chat to them. I’m gonna sit in the background and learn because we’re talking about the ROI of corporate fundraising and really unpacking from, you may have seen if you’re following Caroline Richardson and Larkal, some of the research that you guys put out is just so fantastic and so helpful, and you seem to be building and expanding upon that every year.
Simon Scriver: So I’m really grateful for that. And so this year we, uh, or this time, we have brought on the wonderful Andy King from Fireside Fundraising, who is going to, uh, throw a few questions at Caroline and unpack this a little bit for us. So may I hand it over to you, Andy, and to you, Caroline? You’re very welcome.
Simon Scriver: It’s lovely to see you.
Andy King: Thank you so much
Simon Scriver: Yeah. Well, let’s make a plan, and I will see you on the other side. Take care
Caroline Richardson: Thank you, Simon. Yeah, what a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for asking us. We are very excited to chat all things corporate partnerships and return on investment, aren’t we, Andy?
Andy King: We are indeed. I’m personally stoked. I think the benchmarking studies that Lark Owl do are some of the most useful pieces of research that come out in the sector, and I feel like I’m at about like a book launch of my favorite author. I’m like, oh, my God, I get to ask my own nerdy questions of the person who did the stuff.
Andy King: So let’s dig straight into the corporate side of it, shall we? Oh,
Caroline Richardson: Stop. Yes, let’s. That’s … Yeah. I’m really looking forward to this. And I can, um, for those of you live here today, I can see boxes of chat popping up on the screen, and I’m gonna try really hard not to get distracted or excited at the sight of all of our fundraising friends that are here with us live today.
Caroline Richardson: So yeah, let’s crack on. Let’s get into the data. So just a very brief bit of background on this. Through my company, Lark Owl, I have taken it upon myself to collect data on return on investment for different types of fundraising, different areas of fundraising, and I’ve done that for five years now.
Caroline Richardson: Not consecutively. I had a little bit of a break. But for five years now, I have collected this information. Um, and whilst I was putting the report, the main report together this year, there was some things that really, really struck me about the corporate data and I thought, gosh, that’s interesting. I’m gonna come back to that.
Caroline Richardson: I am gonna dive deeply into the return on investment, but also, uh, success rates in particular, and I wanna talk about it with someone that is actually a corporate fundraising practitioner. So Andy is here to tell me what on earth is going on because all I have is the numbers, very little of the context and the expertise behind it.
Caroline Richardson: So today’s conversation, we’re gonna split into three different parts. We’re gonna talk a bit about participation rates. So overall, how is that changing? Who is doing corporate fundraising? We’re gonna talk about success rates in corporate fundraising, and we’re also gonna talk about return on investment.
Caroline Richardson: And then we’ll have a little chat at the end where perhaps we take some questions, we give some advice, and we share our own reflections. So let’s make a start. We’re gonna talk about participation rates. Um, so obviously, when I gather data from charities about the different types of fundraising they do, not all charities answer all questions because of co- course, not all charities do every single type of fundraising So in 2026, 66% of participants did provide information on corporate partnerships, and this was up a little bit from 61% in 2025
Caroline Richardson: And so I do have a few slides for those of you that are here live, and I’m gonna ask Simon to skip onto the next one. And so in 2026, 45% of participants provided both income and expenditure data on corporate partnerships, and this is 44% in 2025. So sometimes people tell me that they’ve had some money from corporates or sometimes people tell me that they’ve spent some money but they haven’t got anything back yet.
Caroline Richardson: So I am only tabulating the data from people that give me both income and expenditure. So yeah, 45%, up from 44 in 2025. Not much of a difference. But when you overlay that information with our reader survey, um… And I appreciate these are all quite small data sets. 38% of Nest Egg readers, so that’s people that read my newsletter, uh, it’s around 3,500 fundraisers.
Caroline Richardson: Of course not all of them answer the questionnaire, but 38% of readers were doing corporate partnerships in 2026. And that has gone up quite significantly because only 20- 21% were doing corporate fundraising in 2025. So that’s a lot of data. The upshot of that for me is that there, there’s a hint, a suggestion that maybe more charities are doing corporate fundraising than have been previously.
Caroline Richardson: And Andy, I’m dying to know if, if that tracks with your experience, um-
Andy King: Yeah. Absolutely. I think the most compelling stat there is, is the Nest Egg readership. And as you say, it’s not the biggest data set, but 3,500 fundraisers is not insignificant as a sample size, and the number has nearly doubled. And I think we’re in a second great wave in recent years of people being pushed to do corporate fundraising.
Andy King: So I think during COVID, loads of community fundraisers came back to their role and were told, “You’re now a community and corporate fundraiser.” And there was a real push from people who had previously been doing community to be split role. Whereas now, we’re more in a place where people that have been doing trusts are being pushed into doing corporate fundraising as well.
Andy King: And so I think it’s lots of charities are dipping their toe or maybe their whole foot, but not necessarily their whole body, into corporate fundraising by expecting fundraisers to do more than one income stream at a time. To an extent, that might be in response to changes that we’re seeing in the landscape.
Andy King: You know far better than me about the changes in the trust and foundations world, which is a, a scary place that we won’t go to right now. But also, there’s an interesting move that corporates are increasingly giving through corporate foundations, whether that’s a separate legal entity or they’re just slapping the name foundation onto their CSR committee without actually doing any of the things that involve being a corporate foundation.
Andy King: We, Fireside, do our own research, and we’re looking into how much, how many companies have their own foundations. Uh, there’s a bunch of data yet to come. At the moment, it looks like it’s maybe as many or as few, depending on how you view it, as one in 10 companies give through a corporate foundation or give through a foundation as well as through their business.
Andy King: And so it sort of makes sense that trust fundraisers are being pulled into the corporate space beyond that. But the main question you asked is, does it feel like more charities are doing corporate fundraising than ever before? And a strong answer of yes. And a lot of the time, I think that’s being led by trustee boards thinking that corporate is natural or easy more than it is anything else, which probably marries with your experience and was certainly some of what was in your newsletter yesterday.
Yeah. Absolutely. Gosh, I have so many questions and so many thoughts for you, and actually I’m gonna, I’m gonna be really disciplined and save some for when we talk about ROI.
Andy King: Let’s do
Caroline Richardson: it. But I am, I am actually intrigued by the idea of, like rogue foundations, just people like using the word foundation when it’s not a foundation.
Caroline Richardson: I mean, that, that really confuses trust fundraisers because that sends us down a rabbit hole of trying to find the records for that foundation, because if they are separately established, you know, they will have accounts available on the Charity Commission. Highly likely they are administered by a donor-advised fund.
Andy King: Uh-huh.
Which means they are not findable on the Charity Commission, but it can take up an awful lot of time from a trust fundraiser perspective. So gosh, it really does help if people can just be transparent about how they are giving and actually maybe that’s down to us as fundraisers to ask people in more detail about the mechanics of their giving.
Like- Yeah … uh, yeah. Like, are you using a DAF? Do you have your own separately constituted foundation? Or is this a donation that you’ve chosen to name in this particular way internally because that means something to your staff and to your leadership team? I, yeah. So many thoughts. So many thoughts. I, yeah.
Andy King: There,
there’s a-
Andy King: Do you have any ones to add? Yeah. Just the one thing I would say is are you familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect?
I’ve heard the term. Y- yes. I think so. Is this about, like how much you know versus how much you think you know?
Andy King: Yeah. So, uh- Yes … as a behavioral science principle- Yes
Andy King: that the less you know, the less you think there is to know.
Yes.
Andy King: So if you don’t know anything about wine, you’re like, “It’s all grapes, innit?” Whereas as soon as you start to know more things about wine, you’re like, “Oh, the notes and the body and the mouth feel.” I think corporate fundraising in particular is a real victim of the Dunning-Kruger effect from both the charity side and the corporate side.
Andy King: They don’t know anything about a foundation set up, so they’re like I’m sure we can just call it a foundation,” and they don’t think to check. And I don’t think it’s them being deliberately obtuse, but it isn’t helpful for sure.
Absolutely agree
Andy King: There’s a, uh, Sarah in the chat saying that she is definitely experiencing the participation pressure coming from her board, which I think is where a lot of this is coming from, is when it’s not trusts people think corporate.
Andy King: But based on every data set we have, yes, more people are doing corporate than before. And I guess that brings us into, okay, well, if you’re gonna do corporate, how do you do it well? ‘Cause there were some really interesting stats about success rates in your data that I’d love you to explain, Caroline.
Let’s get in there. So, so in 2026, 20 charities shared data on success rates. And what I ask people to do is to tell me how many asks they made in the first quarter of the year, and then of those, how many were accepted. So you’re getting a kind of full, you’re getting a full picture of that success rate.
Um, for obvious reasons. You know, if you ask people how many asks they’re making over the course of a year, it’s likely that many of those will be accepted, but, you know, we, we don’t know about it yet. So it is that first quarter data that I ask for information on. Again, it is a small data set, but I just felt that it was really interesting.
I think before we move on, I just wanna say that the people that provide this return on investment data are usually really experienced fundraisers. They provide the data because they know the data. They are tracking it. They have been tracking it for many years, and they use it to benchmark against their own performance.
So the charities that are sharing this information are generally really good at fundraising. They really know their stuff, so success rates will generally be a lot higher than the average. So, okay, of the 20 charities that shared their data, and this was, this was the bit that blew my mind, 50% had a success rate of 100%.
And this is the reason I wanted to talk to Andy about this. The average number of asks per quarter was less than two. So what this tells me, you know, on a very basic level is that these corporate fundraisers are really going all in on one or two key relationships, and they are kind of throwing all of their eggs into that one basket.
Um, the other 50% that did not have a success rate of 100% I think had a success rate of 41. And now the range amongst this group was huge. So there were a couple of charities having a sort of 92, 98% success rate, and then there was also a couple of charities that had a 0% success rate. And there was one organization, and I thought they were so brave to share this, but they’d made 30 approaches and had, like, no, nothing.
You know, nobody took it. Gosh. Which, yeah, I think is probably… Yeah, they could probably do well to sign up for your newsletter, Andy. And get a few tips. Um, yeah. So that, that must have hurt, and I’m, I’m really delighted that they chose to share that regardless. This group made an average… their average number of asks was 16 per quarter.
So we have two very different strategic approaches here. We’ve got half of the respondents going all in on one or two key relationships, and then we’ve got half of respondents going for a much higher volume approach. Now, it’s important to say that success rates will really kind of be determined on how new or old your fundraising program is.
If you’ve been fundraising for ages, you know, your success rate is gonna be a lot higher because you will have had time to hone and nurture and deepen those relationships with your funders. So if your corporate fundraising program is new, inevitably your success rate will be lower. But I… that being the case, I still think that there are two very different strategic decisions being made within organizations because these are just so distinct.
And maybe now’s a good time to kind of pause the data momentarily, and Andy, for you to just come back and tell me what your reflections were when you saw this information. Did you fall off your chair?
Andy King: Yes and no.
Andy King: Part of it, I think, is it depends how you define making an ask Because I think with trusts and foundations it’s a really clear cut and dry.
Andy King: You sent them a proposal- Yeah … and they either said yes or no.
Caroline Richardson: Yeah.
Andy King: Whereas corporates, sometimes it’s a proposal, sometimes it’s a pitch. Sometimes over coffee they agree to give you 25 grand and ask you to send an email with a little bit of data. And there are lots of asks before the ask. And by that what I mean is you can’t approach companies like you approach trusts and foundations.
Andy King: While there are some similar skillsets, the approach is different. If you are sending an unsolicited, effectively application, to a company, then you’re actually very unlikely to get anywhere. I know anecdotally a story that is even worse than your 30 approaches, no response in a quarter, which is someone sent 2,000 mailings out liking a, a corporate appeal.
Andy King: Uh, and the only responses they got were return to senders from places that it hadn’t actually landed on the doorstep of. So it just shows that you can’t take that mass approach. And actually, by having fewer opportunities, yes, it can feel scarier because your eggs are in fewer baskets, but you can move them forward much more meaningfully.
Andy King: And a big part of that will be the asks that you made in quarter one, you probably started that conversation in quarter three of the previous year, and it takes longer to get to the point of an ask. So yeah, absolutely. It, the 100% success rate did make me fall off my chair, but there being two camps and the quality over quantity camp doing incredibly well doesn’t necessarily surprise me.
Andy King: But I do think it brings up big questions for the fundraising team, which is, well, if I’m gonna go for fewer prospects, how do I make sure that those prospects are high enough quality to justify the amount of time I’m gonna give them? Absolutely … which is a hard question
Caroline Richardson: to answer. It is a hard question, and I should also add that there was no distinction between success rates and large and small charities.
Caroline Richardson: So I’d, I’d looked into that. You know, when you see these kind of two distinct data sets emerging, I thought, “Well, I wonder if yeah, one of these belongs to charit- y- you know, one of these belongs to a charity of a certain size. You know, does this track with charity size?” It doesn’t. There was, um, there was a real variance across, um, the reporting, so that was interesting.
Caroline Richardson: Um, is it worth now just having a quick conversation about how 2026 success rates compare with 2025? Absolutely. We do have a slide. There we go. We have a slide on this for people that are here live today. Um, we are apparently making fewer asks across the board compared with a year ago. So in 2026, the average number of corporate asks per quarter was nine, and a success rate of 71%.
Caroline Richardson: Now, compare this with 2025, the average number of asks per quarter was 26. So yeah, nine versus 26. Success rate of 52% in 2025 compared with 71%. So that feels like good news to me. It feels like that quality versus quantity message is getting through. Andy, do you have any, any thoughts on how things have changed year on year?
Andy King: Yeah. It’s a great question, and I think it goes to the fact that people are doing more of it, and that company expectations are also changing, too. The number of people doing it and using AI for their approaches, et cetera- As Nia’s just put in the chat, I think actually it’s getting harder to get in the door, and therefore get to the point of proposal.
Andy King: But when you get to point of proposal, you know both organizations are taking it quite seriously. Realistically, you’re gonna have at least two, as many as eight, meetings before you make a formal ask. Um, an example is the McCain and Family Fund partnership, which we might all be familiar with. Uh, it was a million-pound partnership, had TV adverts the partnership was on the bag of chips.
Andy King: It took them two years to even get to the point of making the ask of a million pounds. But they then got the yes, and it was at the million-pound mark, which I think is really significant. I do think we are seeing people understand the patience that, uh, is taken, but also the persistence that is followed up.
Andy King: So yeah, it’s getting harder to get to the point of proposal, I think ’cause people’s inboxes are getting busier. But those charities that are persistent and creative are definitely increasing their success rates.
Caroline Richardson: And this really tracks with trust and foundations. So it sounds like corporates are almost operating like invite-only trusts.
Caroline Richardson: Yes. Like, getting in the door is really tough, but once you are part of the conversation, then that success rate is immediately likely to be a lot higher than for those open calls for funding, which attract so many applications nowadays.
Andy King: Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a, a question from Abby in the chat about warm inbound leads or prospects developed from cold, and I wanted to touch on that ’cause you mentioned that the success rate wasn’t impacted by charity size.
Andy King: Mm-hmm. Very often we get this perception that success rate is impacted by charity size, but actually it tends to be impacted most by charity culture and how easy it is to make warm asks.
Caroline Richardson: Yeah.
Andy King: The charities that we see doing really well are, for example, health charities that are comfortable asking their service users to introduce their workplaces.
Andy King: That is one of the highest success rates of conversion that we’ve seen, because you’re going in the places that are already warm. I don’t believe your data distinguishes between cold and warm, but I imagine that is part of fewer, bigger, warmer opportunities too.
Absolutely. It doesn’t, I’m afraid. But as I said, overall the people that participate in the survey are very experienced fundraisers.
Most, you know, most of the charities will have paid professional fundraisers and will have done for many, many years. So I think we can assume that a lot of those asks will be made to either existing supporters or very, very warm supporters. There was also a comment in the chat about comfort zone, and I thought that was really interesting.
Are fundraisers maybe hedging their bets, you know, a little more than necessary? You know, are we perhaps not reaching out and taking risks and making asks where we could be, where there is a really strong fit and where perhaps we just need to, like, bite the bullet and put ourselves in a slightly uncomfortable position?
I don’t know. It’s a great question.
Andy King: Yeah. It is a great question. I’m conscious of time and conscious of a question in the chat about value, and I think it brings us neatly to the final topic we wanted to discuss, which is that return on investment piece. Yes. Are those asks higher value, et cetera? Where are we at in return on investment, Caroline?
Caroline Richardson: Yeah. Okay. So I do have one more slide about success rates, and that is just to make the very quick point that trust fundraisers are also making fewer applications. So trust fundraisers made on average 59 applications per quarter. But in tw- in 2025, that number was 72. So I just think that quality versus quantity approach is perhaps being adopted across the board in high value.
Caroline Richardson: Let’s talk about ROI. So I just have … The figures are here on the screen. So, overall return on investment for corporate partnerships is falling. I have extrapolated the numbers for small and large charities. So overall, it’s £5 and a penny spent … Sorry, raised for every pound spent. That’s the 2026 figure.
Caroline Richardson: That was £5.54 the year prior. Interesting. For small charities, it’s £5.44, down from 6.24. And large charities, so that’s a million pounds and over, £3.83 compared with £5. So yeah, they do appear to be dropping across the board, and that tracks with many other areas of fundraising as well yeah, Andy, do you have any kind of thoughts?
Caroline Richardson: It was pretty obvious, isn’t it,
Andy King: I think with the less asks being made, I think that point about comfort zone is important to dwell on in that the lower conversion rate can still sometimes end up in more partnerships, right? Because if you’re if you’re making more asks at a lower conversion rate, but still landing more, there is a push to, like, make sure that you ask at an appropriate time.
Andy King: There is there is a certain level at which a, a partner is going to be ready. That said, as you say, this trend in decreasing ROI is kind of across the sector or across income streams, and so there’s something to be expected there, and I think a- an ROI of five to one is still fairly high.
Caroline Richardson: Yeah. I agree.
Caroline Richardson: And actually, Alicia raises a really important point in the chat around value. Now, what ROI does not tell you is, well, how much did you raise overall? Did you hit your fundraising target? And that actually is a more important metric, I would argue.
Andy King: Yeah. Absolutely. And one of the conversations we have really regularly with charities is, let’s say, in two years’ time, you can be making 500K from corporate partnerships.
Andy King: Do you want that 500K to be coming from three companies, or do you want it to be coming from 10? Either way, it’s the same income. But do you want three, and therefore a higher ROI, or 10, and therefore less risk? There isn’t a correct answer. There’s only an individual organizational answer. There are reasons that some charities might want one more than the other.
Andy King: For example, if you’re trying to raise awareness of a particular condition, more medium might be better than fewer bigger. Or if you are a more private brand, then fewer bigger might be better, et cetera, et cetera. But it, one isn’t necessarily better than the other. There’s just something better for you.
Andy King: And I think a lot of what this data points to isn’t necessarily cold cut answers, but really useful questions that organizations can ask themselves.
Caroline Richardson: Yeah. I would absolutely encourage organizations to know their own return on investments. I think that is the best, most helpful place to start. And I mean, I think £5 returned for every pound spent is pretty good.
Caroline Richardson: I think another question to ask is, well, how sustainable and how solid is my return on investment? Because if it’s going up and down, if it’s sort of veering wildly, you know, year on year, and it’s, it’s not following a kind of predictable sort of very gentle uplift, I think that, that for me is a, if I were a fundraising director, I would feel uncomfortable about that.
Caroline Richardson: My goal would be ROIs that are similar year on year, maybe ROIs that gently increase, you know, as your fundraising program establishes itself and as your donor relationships are- c- continued and supported and nurtured by the team
Andy King: It’s one of the things I think about all the time with, for example, Omaze.
Andy King: If you’re not familiar, it’s a corporate partnership that, uh, they auction off a house, and they guarantee you, I believe, a million and a half pounds. It’s a re- it’s, it’s a lot of work. It is a lot of work. It’s a lot of work for about three months, and then you get the money, and it disappears, and they won’t do it again.
Andy King: And I actually think it’s … Th- they’ve done it again for a, a te- a minuscule number of their charity partners. Um, for charities early in their corporate partnerships journey, I think winning Omaze could be one of the worst things they ever do because it’ll convince the charity that corporate partnerships are easy, and they’re short-term, lots of work for major returns, and there aren’t other opportunities out there like that.
Andy King: And if you build your model on landing partnerships like Omaze, you’re gonna set yourself up for financial ruin really quickly. Um, I think the Omaze model is incredible. I think they’re achieving amazing results, but I think it requires quite a mature corporate partnerships team for it to not really heavily skew the expectations of your organization moving forwards.
Andy King: Um, so yeah, absolutely. That boom and bust needs to be avoided.
Caroline Richardson: Yeah. I have so many questions about the Omaze model, which I’m not gonna ask because yeah, just, like, way too controversial. I don’t want their lawyers hounding me down.
Caroline Richardson: Yeah. I think, yeah, that’s a really, that’s a really, really good point. Anything else on ROI? I did- oh, I did make, I did make a point again when we were talking earlier about how post-pandemic community fundraising teams were being asked to take on corporates in addition to their- Yeah … community work, and now you’re seeing more of a trend towards trusts and foundations team being asked to look at corporate.
Caroline Richardson: “You should have a look at corporate.” Oh, it’s such a loaded sentence.
Andy King: Yeah, absolutely.
Um, and I just, I do understand actually there are huge benefits and necessities in fundraisers working across more than one discipline.
Caroline Richardson: Of course.
I get that, and I think that is, I think it’s a good thing in many, many ways.
I think that it’s an, an im- well, it’s unavoidable when you’re a small charity with very limited resource.
And if there’s any, any CEOs here doing all the things, you know, we see you, we get it. I do think, though, that this is where my ROI data, and actually all ROI data and calculations, falls down because where fundraisers are working across multiple areas, it’s absolutely impossible to extrapolate the data-
Caroline Richardson: Yeah
and to assign data to different fundraising categories. And it, it sort of becomes obsolete when you’re doing that, and I have, I’ve ha- like, really reckoned with this and really tried to sort of figure out, well, is it worth doing? Because actually, I think a lot of really great fundraising happens totally outside of silos and categorization.
Andy King: Yeah. Absolutely. One recommendation I wanted to make actually for people who are at the start of calculating their ROI or at the start of their corporate fundraising, or they’re in a blended model or any of that in the Fundraising Everywhere library, there’s an on-demand session from Wikimedia UK.
Andy King: Belvin talks through their first year of corporate fundraising, what they did achieve, what they didn’t achieve, the roadblocks, the things that they managed to overcome, the things they’re still wrestling with. It was one of the highest rated sessions from the Corporate Partnerships Conference, and I’d really recommend it for healthy expectation setting for what can be achieved in 12 months, which is often what people are operating to a timescale of.
Andy King: Would you look at, at corporate for 12 months? And like, sure, but the ROI is not gonna be £5 within year one, and Belvin’s session is some really nice proof of that.
That’s a great recommendation. Yeah. Um, yeah, if you’re not a Fundraising Everywhere member, then why? Join. Join. Okay. It is, we’re 35 minutes in.
I, I have, like, one more point I wanna make.
Andy King: Uh-huh.
Caroline Richardson: And then we can either wrap it up, or we can have a look at a couple more questions before we all go off and get some lunch. Sounds great. Shall I make my point? Shall I go for it? Please do. Do it. And then, Andy, you can perhaps come in with anything you’d like to say.
Caroline Richardson: So the, I mean, I’ve been a fundraiser for, like, 22 years, and this little report about corporate return on investment gave me this new realization about corporate fundraising versus trust fundraising, and it was just such a, a surprise and a real delight to be able to learn something new after having done this for so many years.
Caroline Richardson: And that was that corporates, trusts, and major gifts tend to get lumped into this high-value arena. High value, low volume, relationship-led, all that kind of stuff. And I’ve, I have done a bit of corporate fundraising in my time. Primarily, I do trusts and major gifts. But what doing this report really brought home to me was that trusts and foundations fundraising is a much higher volume activity compared with corporate.
Caroline Richardson: And if you look at, go back at the data and look at the number of asks people are making, trust and foundations fundraisers are making considerably more asks than corporate fundraisers are. And corporate fundraising therefore tracks much more closely, I would say, with a kind of major gifts program in terms of that skill set that has, that is required in order to be successful.
Caroline Richardson: So yeah, mind blown officially.
Andy King: It’s a really useful point, I think. I’ll end on two things if that’s okay one of which is ano- another difference between trusts and corporate partnerships. And again, it’s, it’s actually a quote from Belvin’s Wikimedia session. I’d really recommend it. Uh, in Belvin’s words “Corporate partnerships is a team sport,” whereas trusts and foundations can be played solo.
Andy King: And I think that’s really worth reckoning with, that you do need comms and services support to make the £5 return on investment for corporate partnerships. There are delivery expectations, there are recognition expectations that aren’t necessarily there for trusts and foundations. So really worth noting corporate partnerships are a team sport, particularly when it comes to identifying those best prospects, those fewer, bigger, better opportunities.
Andy King: Pipeline building is hard. It is something Fireside Fundraising can help you with. In particular, we can ask your trustees who they know in ways that get them to actually answer the question. Having a consultant in is irritatingly effective at that kind of work. But if there’s one thing to do, it is to create a team culture of corporate partnerships and make sure everyone knows what a good partner for you looks like, which isn’t just a company with lots of money.
Andy King: There’s loads of resources in the Fundraising Everywhere library on that. There’s some stuff on the Fi- Fireside Fundraising website. Caroline, I know you have a bunch of resources on good prospecting, et cetera. But it’s a team sport, and you wanna spend more time identifying the best opportunities are my key takeaways.
Caroline Richardson: Absolutely. And one point to add to that, Andy, is that trusts and foundations I don’t think can be done in isolation anymore. Ideally it’s, it is, you know, a collaboration between colleagues. You, you can’t do it completely in isolation, but that is becoming less and less and less the case. And I’m thinking about how we as trust fundraisers now work closely with our marketing and comms colleagues in order that the messages we put out there are absolutely coherent across the board.
Caroline Richardson: Um, oh, yes. Oh, gosh, I could talk about this for hours with you, Andy. Me too. I do want to direct people towards my newsletter because it’s… I’m just super proud of it and I love writing it. It makes me so happy. It’s called The Nest Egg and you can subscribe if you’re not already subscribed via my website, which is larkowl.uk, and there is a section called Newsletter.
Caroline Richardson: And you can, you can sign up to receive weekly or monthly newsletters depending on whether or not you want to be a paying subscriber. But loads of our return on investment reports and data are available, and we do share lots of that for free. So, oh, I’d love it if you were able to subscribe today.
Caroline Richardson: And Andy, where can people find you? You said the Fireside Fundraising website.
Andy King: Yeah, absolutely. Just before I say that, I wanna say I think The Nest Egg is one of the most generous resources in the sector. It’s true. If you’re not already subscribed, I would hugely recommend it. It’s one of the few newsletters that I read cover to cover every time it comes out, really genuinely.
Andy King: Larkowl.uk, add to that newsletter for sure. Me, I am more of a LinkedIn profile than I am a human being, so you can find me here where I am now. Send me a connection request. I’d love to speak to all of you about your corporate fundraising. Similarly, we do research projects like Larkowl. Uh, we recently did one on why companies choose the charities they give to.
Andy King: You can get that from firesidefundraising.com. Uh, but if you’re only gonna do one thing from this session, larkowl.uk. Follow Caroline’s newsletter. It is absolutely gold.
Caroline Richardson: Andy, bless you. Shall we- Thanks so much … shall we say goodbye? Shall we say thank you and goodbye to everyone?
Andy King: Let’s do it. Let’s let people get- Okay
Andy King: some lunch break, some beads on toast, whatever they have time for left. Uh, Caroline, thank you as always for sharing your beautiful and generous insights with us. It’s good to see you.
And thank you, Andy. It’s been an absolute pleasure.
Andy King: Anytime. Ciao. Bye.
Alex Aggidis: Thank you so much for listening to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast.
Alex Aggidis: If you’re enjoying this podcast, why not share it with a fundraising friend? And if you would like to give us a little like or subscribe, it really helps more fundraisers like you find us. Thank you so much. See you next time