Transcript

[00:00:00] Multiple Voices: Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. Fundraising everywhere. , you don’t need to add me in there.

[00:00:31] 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 fundraising everwhere.com/podcast to subscribe Now onto today’s episode, enjoy.

[00:01:00] Simon Scriver: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. I am Simon Reiber, one of the co-founders of Fundraising everywhere. Uh, and I have another couple of great guests on today. Um, but we’ve invited them on because you know how much we love research, you know how much we love reports and really we get a lot of questions from our members and our community.

[00:01:18] Simon Scriver: Um, you know, trying to compare themselves with other organizations. ’cause fundraising can be a very lonely job sometimes, especially in the area of trusts. Uh, sometimes you are the only person doing it and you really don’t often have something to measure yourself against. So I’m really happy today, um, that from gifted, we have Amy Stevens and Carna Beeson, who have joined us, uh, to share some of their findings from the 2025 Trust and Foundations Insight survey.

[00:01:44] Simon Scriver: Hello, Amy. Hello, Konna. How are you? 

[00:01:46] Amy Stevens: Good afternoon. Very well. Thank you. 

[00:01:49] Simon Scriver: I’m very happy to have you here. And I will say to anyone listening, great. Always love speak about research. Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off there. Um, but yeah, thank you very much for coming. Um. The research that we are talking about today, you can find it@giftedphilanthropy.com.

[00:02:05] Simon Scriver: Um, it’s the 2020 5 25 Trust and Foundations insight survey, and you’ll find a link in the description of this. Um, but you guys, you guys put out quite a few of these reports and this is something that you’re trying to make an ongoing thing in terms of this trust and foundations insights. Amy, maybe you could tell me a little bit about your organization, because you, you are the chief executive, you are the, you are the person who set it up, right.

[00:02:27] Simon Scriver: Could you tell me a little bit about who you work with and what your organization actually does? 

[00:02:31] Amy Stevens: Absolutely. Yeah. So at Gifted, we are full service fundraising consultants, so we work from all different levels of support, whether that be a, a fundraising feasibility study, uh, before a major capital program to giving hands-on support in a fundraising program.

[00:02:49] Amy Stevens: We do legacy campaigns, uh, strategic reviews, um, but also support clients in particular with trust and foundation work, as well as their major gifts. So we try to, you know, do these projects. Uh, and I’ll kind of talk about it because he’s, he’s the man behind it. But we try and do these projects to just offer a bit of insight really for, um, our clients and for ourselves as well.

[00:03:12] Amy Stevens: We’re all still learning every day in this field, aren’t we? So it’s helpful for us as well as we go forward supporting our clients, but we work across the uk. Europe and indeed internationally as well. Um, across some key areas. We do a lot of work in the education space, um, a lot in health and welfare, um, education, like I say, um, increasingly animals and climate.

[00:03:38] Amy Stevens: Becoming more popular. Um, arts, culture, heritage, uh, we do the whole range. The only thing we really do not touch is politics because political fundraising gets messy and we don’t wanna be involved in that. 

[00:03:51] Simon Scriver: I mean, Amy, it sounds like you have enough stress on your plate. You’re already juggling, juggling on that.

[00:03:55] Simon Scriver: You do not wanna add politics to it. 

[00:03:57] Amy Stevens: That’s it. 

[00:03:57] Multiple Voices: Exactly. 

[00:03:58] Simon Scriver: Um, but I, I do love talking to people like you because you, you, because you work with so many different organizations, you almost kind of have this view across the sector of what’s going on. And I know. For a lot of fundraisers, it can be hard to know what’s going on around that.

[00:04:12] Simon Scriver: Connor, you are, you are the main driver behind the research. What, maybe you could talk us through who’s involved and kind of what, um, you know, who, who’s, who’s taking part in this that, that you’ve seen. 

[00:04:24] Konna Beeson: Yeah. So, uh, obviously this was geared towards anyone doing trust fundraising and I’ll we’ll break down in, in a minute sort of how that was made up and sort of who took part specifically.

[00:04:34] Konna Beeson: Um, I mean, first of all, probably worth saying that we were, we were really delighted with the, the sample size, which is quite difficult to get in with this sort of survey of 155 fundraisers took part. Um, which is, which is really, really important. Um, ’cause there’s nothing worse than sort of looking at, um, trying to get some data and extrapolating insights from it.

[00:04:52] Konna Beeson: And, you know, it’s got. You can’t really do it, um, with a small sample size. So that was really important. Um, we had quite a, a good range of different types of causes that took part as well. Uh, so the most common ones in the survey were health and wellbeing, disability education, and the arts being the most common.

[00:05:10] Konna Beeson: Um, but we did have representation from pretty much every, uh, type of charity, which is. Really, really good. Um, there are reasons for that as well ’cause of sort of our own, uh, pushing out on our own, uh, database, uh, to get people to take part, um, as well in And in terms of the, sort of the, the turnover and the size of charities, that took part as well.

[00:05:30] Konna Beeson: Um, most charities were under five mil, um, income, uh, 45% were under one mil. Um, so again, it’s, it’s a, you could argue it’s sort of quite representative of the wider sector in that regard. Um. In terms of, uh, you know, we did ask how many years that charity had had a trust and foundation program built in because it’s really, really important.

[00:05:52] Konna Beeson: ’cause someone starting out in year one is fundamentally different to year three, um, and beyond. Um, and the results were overall almost 70% of people that took part had been doing trust and foundations within that charity for five or more years. Uh, 12% for three to five years. Um, so we only had 2% that were literally starting out, which to be honest, kind of makes sense because.

[00:06:17] Konna Beeson: Probably got a lot less to talk about if you’ve only just started doing trust and foundations when you’re at least recapping on a whole 12 months. So, um, so 

[00:06:24] Simon Scriver: you, you just wanna see the results, don’t you? That’s the, you wanna see the results of the survey and, uh, yeah. Not even answer the questions yet. I think.

[00:06:35] Amy Stevens: The number that took part, we should give a shout out to all our friends and colleagues in the sector who shared it as well and shared it more wildly. So our friends over at, and they shared it with their network and we’ve then since shared their research projects. So it’s important we do that, isn’t it?

[00:06:51] Amy Stevens: Because you know, it benefits all of us in the sector. So thanks guys to everyone who helped us get people on board for the research. 

[00:06:58] Simon Scriver: A hundred percent a double shout out to Caroline at Al, um, because she’s so good to us as well. But yeah, to remind people, I mean, this is something you’re planning on repeating.

[00:07:06] Simon Scriver: So gifted philanthropy.com is the website. There’s contact details main list and, and the research itself there. So do sign up to it. Um, and sorry, Connie, you were, it’s interesting to think about the structure of these teams. ’cause you’re talking about the size of them. What, what do they look like? Is it, is it one trust person full time or is it, what kind of people were responding to you?

[00:07:26] Konna Beeson: Yeah, it’s a really good question. So we did ask that question specifically and accounted for it in the results as well. And it’s, uh, the results basically said that we’ve got a roughly equal mix of people either working one day a week or five days a week on trust and foundations. Because you may be a three days a week trust and foundations manager, in which case that’d be three days.

[00:07:46] Konna Beeson: You may be a general fundraising manager, in which case we kind of asked you to say, you know, on a rough sort of your average week. How much of your time is spent just in trust foundations, in which case you may have put two days out, the five, for example. Okay. And we accounted for that and all of the results when we talk about success rates and number of applications sent and things like that to see if there was a, you know, a clear sort of, you know, prorata difference and all those sort of things as well.

[00:08:09] Konna Beeson: So it’s quite, I 

[00:08:11] Simon Scriver: that’s, uh, I mean, do you get many where it’s, it’s multiple people responsible for trust who are doing five days a week? I mean, do you deal with a lot of organizations to that scale? 

[00:08:21] Konna Beeson: Yeah, ab Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, as with a general rule of thumb, obviously the, the, the larger you go in terms of charity size, you know, the more you’re likely to have had a very established trust and foundations program, you’ve probably got at least one full-time person as well as an, as well as, um, some, at least a fundraising assistant that will do somewhat work assisting you.

[00:08:39] Konna Beeson: But, you know, there’s certainly charities that took part in this that said that they were one of, um, three. Um, pretty much part-time or full-time trusts, um, fundraisers. So again, it’s really the whole, the whole shebang. 

[00:08:52] Simon Scriver: Yeah. Yeah. They’re all in there. It’s brilliant. So let, let’s get straight on because, because I know people, I mean, the, the main thing I went straight to was the success rate.

[00:09:00] Simon Scriver: Yeah. Um, but in, in terms of, uh, some of the stats that came out for you, what jumped out at you? Um, leaning towards things like the success rate that we ly want to know. 

[00:09:08] Konna Beeson: Yes. Great. So, uh, we’ll give sort of the top line result. First of all, and this is really important because we did this survey the year before as well and we really sort of went, uh, in a lot deeper with the questions we were asking, and that was based on feedback that people gave from that survey as well, which is great.

[00:09:25] Konna Beeson: Um, so in terms of the average success rate, so. Everything, uh, included all in once. That was just over 35% and the average number of applications sent, uh, was 52. So this is all in sort of the 12 month period and that we asked leading up to that. Now. It’s really, really, almost somewhat obvious, um, to understand that an average success rate is really not useful to benchmark yourself against.

[00:09:51] Konna Beeson: Mm-hmm. There are so many variables, especially in this sector. Um, you know, your size, how long you, your charity’s had a program, do you have warm funders? Do you know what type of charity you are? All these sort of sorts of things. So what we. Really wants to do is ask more particular questions around that as well.

[00:10:07] Konna Beeson: And those are actually the more interesting insights. So in particular, um, when we asked, um, fundraisers taking part to break down sort of their success, how much was raised and how many was sent based on if it was a cold application to, you know, a new funder or to a repeat. Um, funder as well. So obviously a much warmer, um, funder getting sort of year on year or, you know, every three years sort of funding.

[00:10:32] Konna Beeson: Um, the breakdown of those was really interesting. So, um, what we found there was that there was a, a 2.6 times greater success rate for those repeat funders than cold. Mm-hmm. Um, and actually a greater ROI, um, two of about 1.7. Times, um, sort of the ROI compared to cold, uh, as well, which is really important.

[00:10:52] Konna Beeson: And the sort of the, the nerdier stats spray in me as well, looked a little bit deeper into that in terms of like the reliability of the statistics as well. And it, uh, for, um, repeat funding applications, it was a 0.9 sort of reliability metric, which. May not sound that attractive to some people taking part.

[00:11:10] Konna Beeson: But actually for those of you that do benchmarking and forecasting, that’s a really important metric. ’cause it shows you just how reliable, um, you know, approaching and developing those relationships with your existing funders actually is compared to just constantly, you know, spending your time trying to grow and approach.

[00:11:27] Konna Beeson: New funders all the time as well. 

[00:11:29] Simon Scriver: I, I mean, it, it kind of echoes every form of fundraising, isn’t it? That it’s, it’s much easier to raise money from people who are already supporting you than it is to find those new people. I mean, I mean, you guys have a lot of years experience in this, um, hands-on experience.

[00:11:43] Simon Scriver: I’m guessing that’s not a, a surprise for you. But, um, do you see many, ’cause I I think the pushback some people might have is, is many Tru Trust, many grants are just one year. Do you know? And there is sometimes that negative feeling that it’s like, well, you know, all this work is only ever gonna be for one year.

[00:12:01] Simon Scriver: But the, the feeling I’m getting from you is actually multi-year is more common than people acknowledge. 

[00:12:06] Amy Stevens: Yeah, I think, like you say Simon, it’s about relationships, isn’t it? So we see the full range across clients that we work with. Some that kind of have had support from funders in the past and then not spoken to them for eight years until they do their next capital project.

[00:12:21] Amy Stevens: Yeah. And then think they can just pick up where they’re left off. 

[00:12:24] Multiple Voices: Yeah. 

[00:12:25] Amy Stevens: And then others. So we’re currently working with a fantastic organization. That deals with young people with learning disabilities and their team have been phenomenal at impact reporting to their funders. So they’ve had funders that have given to them year on year for their revenue costs, for their general, uh, running programmatic costs.

[00:12:45] Amy Stevens: But they’ve been so good at impact reporting when we recently went out to them for the capsule project. They were all in, all of them at, at really good levels, and it, it was that relationships. So, yeah. 

[00:12:58] Multiple Voices: Yeah, let’s 

[00:12:58] Amy Stevens: not forget that with our trust and foundations, you know, it’s the same as any major donor or any other donor really, isn’t it?

[00:13:04] Simon Scriver: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. And kind of in, in the report, you talk a bit about how much the income is raised. Do you see. Like is, is it like that first year is a taster for a lot of these grants and then they, you know, they fill you out and then we’ll give you more in the following years? Or what, what kind of trends do you see in, in how the amounts they give, um, changes over time?

[00:13:24] Simon Scriver: I. 

[00:13:25] Konna Beeson: Yeah. So I mean that’s, I mean, that’s certainly for somewhat obvious reasons, sort of the case. You know, if you are, if you are the funder mm-hmm. Um, and you’ve got a brand new charity you probably never even heard of them before and you’re, you’re probably gonna be a lot more risk averse to giving them a very, very large, um, grant and the first time.

[00:13:41] Konna Beeson: But once you’ve seen the work, they’ve got that monitoring evaluation, the impact reports. Possibly then done a site visit, if it’s a capital uh, appeal, or that their work is sort of on a site, you are personally far more invested in that charity and to make it a more informed decision to know where your money is gonna go the next time.

[00:13:59] Konna Beeson: Obviously, there are exceptions to that. So if you’re doing a large capital, uh, campaign, for example, you do. Tons of these. Um, yes, you are absolutely gonna be relying on cold funders as well as, um, repeat funders. Um, and they are still highly willing, you know, depending on what it is to give seven, eight figure grants.

[00:14:16] Konna Beeson: It depends on who they are. Is, is a bit of a nuance within that, but I. Absolutely. In terms of income raised, it’s quite important and we’ve got actually in the, in the report, uh, which everyone can see, uh, we’ve broken down sort of the total income raised as well, sort of by, uh, different levels because it’s quite important to be able to benchmark yourself against, especially in sort of, you know, the current landscape, whether you may get a lot of internal pressure to grow and like raise income and things like that.

[00:14:43] Konna Beeson: And, um, you know, what we saw is that I think it was 41% of people that took part said. That they, uh, raised between 50 and 200 k, 30% was between 200 and 500 K. Um, and then it was, you know, much smaller percentages, far above and and below that. So, um, we did break that down further by cause type, but they obviously, there, there comes a certain point in doing this sort of survey where you can only, uh.

[00:15:07] Konna Beeson: You can only sort of segment your data so far before it, uh, you know, becomes a little, uh, meaningless at that point. But I think that’s really, yeah. You having 

[00:15:14] Simon Scriver: one-to-one conversations by that point. 

[00:15:17] Konna Beeson: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it’s not data anymore, you know, case studies. Um, but that’s really important to be able to benchmark yourself ’cause.

[00:15:24] Konna Beeson: I mean, obviously there is always gonna be a cap to the amount that any individual can raise, no matter what field. It’s, um, so that’s really, really important to, to understand 

[00:15:34] Simon Scriver: the, it’s interesting the range because, so sometimes in, in reports or talking about trust, I. It doesn’t really acknowledge the big scope of size of organizations you have, and I, I was really pleased to see in this report that you’ve, you’ve dove a lot into that.

[00:15:47] Simon Scriver: Amy, I’m curious as, as someone who runs like an agency, as a chief exec, do you get a good mix? Like at what point do you find people generally will employ an agency or an outsider like yours? Is it the medium and big? I know you work with all sizes, but what, when do people finally realize they need outside help with this?

[00:16:06] Amy Stevens: Again, varies greatly. Um, so we work with organizations of all sizes. We can one day be doing a, a trust and foundations training session with volunteers at a local church, and they’re gonna do the applications themself and they want the guidance on how to, how to do that. So let’s say they’re raising.

[00:16:24] Amy Stevens: 250,000 in total to a global organization. Connor and I have worked on 200 million pound, hundred million dollar, uh, feasibility studies in the last year where big organization, but everybody’s so busy that they can’t kind of have the headspace and also the objective view that consultants give on things to, to look.

[00:16:48] Amy Stevens: So it, it really varies here in the uk, um, you know, the big national charities tend to have lots of team in place already and highly skilled individuals in development. Um, so we do a lot of the middle range in the UK where there’s team in place who may be need to upskill or expand or they don’t have quite enough capacity, so, 

[00:17:11] Multiple Voices: mm-hmm.

[00:17:12] Amy Stevens: Really does vary, but we, we will, uh, we’ll deal with all size of clients, and to be honest, you get the same joy out of the, the really small ones as you do with the massive ones sometimes. So it’s just 

[00:17:21] Simon Scriver: Oh, a hundred percent 

[00:17:23] Amy Stevens: nice to have that mix. Yeah. 

[00:17:25] Simon Scriver: Yeah. I love working with smaller organizations, but, but it’s interesting because it’s like there is a need at every stage of that growth.

[00:17:31] Simon Scriver: Like even no matter how big you get, sometimes you do need it. I think almost the trust community I’ve found is like really helpful on, in Facebook groups and even the fundraising everywhere, community people sharing applications and people really kind of talking together about how it, how um, they can help each other.

[00:17:47] Simon Scriver: Which I, which I love. And just a reminder, just a little insert of an ad because I forgot to say, um, but not to forget the trust in Major Donors Conference, the Fundraising Everywhere conference where we focus on trusts and grants. Um, and that’s happening in December, so you can find that on fundraising of red.com.

[00:18:02] Simon Scriver: I forgot to say it, nobody reminded me. Um, so the other thing, um, that one of you mentioned last year’s report, and I haven’t actually compared them side by side, but in terms of, um, changes in, in year to year, how are you finding that evolving? 

[00:18:16] Konna Beeson: Yeah, so I mean the, the biggest thing that we did was, uh, go out and ask for feedback from everyone that took part, or at least, or even saw sort of, you know, the first survey and report that we did to say, you know, what are the sort of things that you’re looking, uh, to find out more about, uh, what would you like asked and answered.

[00:18:33] Konna Beeson: So we fed that feedback into the creation of this year’s surveys and we’ll absolutely intend to do that again. Um, again, obviously the more questions you intend to ask you, you are somewhat reliant on a larger sample size, so it comes with that because obviously you don’t wanna ask. Ask too many questions because otherwise you’ll just end up spending your whole day doing it, and no one’s really gonna do that.

[00:18:51] Konna Beeson: Um, so that’s really important to get that feedback. Um, in terms of like the main differences, it’s absolutely around sort of, you know, we asked this year for the first time around, you know, cold and repeat applications. We’ve asked around the use of AI and writing techniques. Um, the, the. Size and the types of grants as well is something we didn’t ask before.

[00:19:09] Konna Beeson: So something really, really interesting that I found interesting in this was when we asked what is the smallest value grants that you’ve applied for and the highest value grants that you’ve applied for. Mm-hmm. Um, which is really interesting. ’cause you know, the sector is so, so massive and. I guess if you were probably outside of the trust fundraising sector, you might expect, oh, the larger charities will be applying only for the large grants and you know, and like that.

[00:19:33] Konna Beeson: But what we found is actually 85% of people that took part said that the lowest grant that they applied for was up to five grand. Um, and when you, when you consider sort of the broad scope types and sizes of charities that took part in this survey, that really. Points to at least one potential cause and effect of where some of these issues around high competition and, and things like that are because we’ve got, and it’s somewhat disproportionate, uh, to small charities who are most of the time only going for the sort of the smaller end of the scale.

[00:20:03] Konna Beeson: Mm-hmm. Um, but you are also competing with, let’s say, 85% of the rest of the sector at that lower level. And you obviously then get that burden on the funders themselves who are, if they’re sort of maybe a smaller funder or historically they’ve always maybe done grants of around five, uh, to 10 K max.

[00:20:22] Konna Beeson: They’re quite from this data anyway. They’re probably getting the brunt of that higher competition. And then what they do with that is sort of, you know, this ongoing conversation now where we are seeing, you know, more and more funders every day to close the doors, um, either indefinitely or to review the strategies.

[00:20:39] Konna Beeson: And so we’re gonna see quite an interesting landscape and I think that pointed to. Um, that points to one reason for that, which I’d never seen before. 

[00:20:48] Simon Scriver: Well, what does the, what I mean, unpack that for me a bit, because that, I mean, that doesn’t, that sounds like almost an efficiency problem if, if you have these huge organizations who are, who are dealing with massive grants, but are they’re also putting time into these sub 5,000.

[00:21:03] Simon Scriver: Am I interpreting that wrong, or what, what’s your take on that? 

[00:21:06] Konna Beeson: I mean, I would say ultimately, even if you’re a, you know, a. A hundred million pound health charity in the uk. You are, you still have need, you’ve still got people or research or whatever it is to support If there are funders out there that are, even if they’re only giving grants up to 5K or 10 k, I say only.

[00:21:23] Konna Beeson: Um, and that funder exists primarily to support, let’s say, cancer research initiatives. Of course, you’re gonna apply to it because you’re eligible to apply for it, and that work is still just as vital as anyone else. The, the, the, i, I suppose the ramification of that is. It’s re, it’s. It’s on the funders really.

[00:21:42] Konna Beeson: And we are seeing it, as I say, we’re seeing more and more and more funders realize that we may have to change how we do our approach. Um, whether we more do proactive searching ourselves and don’t invite applications like unsolicited, uh, which we are seeing sort of more of that. And there’s some data on that, um, which I’m sure we’ll go on to.

[00:22:02] Konna Beeson: Um, 

[00:22:02] Amy Stevens: I think it’ll see next year what, what comes out on that. Basis, won’t it? We see if it is a real developing trend or if it was a bit anomaly, really? 

[00:22:12] Simon Scriver: Yeah. From the, from the mi from the mindset of your client, uh, your clients, Amy, if they. You know, obviously they only have limited number of hours in the day.

[00:22:21] Simon Scriver: And, and you guys have, I know, touch on, on fundraiser burnout and, and overworking. I mean, does it, does it make sense for, like, how do you pick and choose how many grants you apply for? Because you can apply for as many, you know, you can keep, always do more hours in the day, which is what many fundraisers find themselves doing.

[00:22:39] Simon Scriver: But at what point do you say, I’m only focusing on, on this subset of grants, or what, what’s your thoughts on that? 

[00:22:46] Amy Stevens: So we, we have conversations with, with clients. You know, almost daily on this kind of subject. Um, and it’s often really important with setting sites for trustee leadership campaign boards.

[00:22:58] Amy Stevens: You know, the senior leadership team at charities who think that their trust fund RA raise should be applying for 250, uh, different grants every year when actually, you know, research like this proves if you actually invest the time into looking for the right match, getting yourself a, a top 30 to start with, that you can be working on.

[00:23:18] Amy Stevens: Building networks. We know that even within trust and foundations, if you can have a connection to a trustee or somebody involved in the organization, if you can get them to visit, your chances of success are so much higher. 

[00:23:31] Multiple Voices: Mm-hmm. So 

[00:23:31] Amy Stevens: we really try and get clients to focus on, you know. A, is there any easy wins to build some momentum, but then where do we go, where’s the next best bets and how can we build those relationships rather than the, the blanket approach?

[00:23:45] Amy Stevens: Because it just, it doesn’t, doesn’t yield the results. 

[00:23:50] Konna Beeson: Yeah. It’s, it’s worth adding to that as well in terms of like the data in the survey. So the one thing that we did ask in, in the first. Survey and then asked again in this was, uh, what we looked at the differences in success rates based on the total number of applications that you sent.

[00:24:05] Konna Beeson: Because what we found in the first time we did this, uh, survey was that there was a really clear, um, drop off after, you know, a certain amount of applications was sent in terms of success rates, which you could. Quite easily attribute that to, you know, burnout and, you know, your, your quality in applications and things like that is diminishing ’cause you’ve only got so much time in the world.

[00:24:26] Konna Beeson: So we asked that again, looked into it again and we found pretty much exactly the same finding as you did the year before. Which is great because it’s more validity to the findings, uh, to have year on year, the same trend. Because what we basically saw was that sort of between 25 to 50 applications, um, that.

[00:24:44] Konna Beeson: Sort of like the, the sweet spot, especially around 30 applications tended to be sort of overall your your best success rate, even though it. 

[00:24:54] Simon Scriver: Is this per year? Sorry, just to clarify, is that per year you’re talking? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, go on. 

[00:24:59] Konna Beeson: Yeah. Uh, yeah, so, um, now the, the success success rates were, you know, much higher if you only send up to 10 applications.

[00:25:06] Konna Beeson: Um, but I would say for sort of your, your average charity anyway, the sweet spot tended to be around 30. Um, so sort of between that 25 to 50 range anyway, you know, there was a, um. A, a 62% sort of success rate for, you know, for warm funders, I believe it was. And, um, and it was around 39% for cold. But then that diminishes in, uh, that goes straight down, uh, again, the further go down in the, uh, the number of applications you send.

[00:25:32] Multiple Voices: Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:32] Konna Beeson: So that’s not necessarily to say that, you know, doing more than that in terms of applications wouldn’t. You’ll you more income because it, it depends the value of the grants you apply for, which ones are successful and which aren’t. But it is a mathematical formula to factor in to when you’re doing a forecasting for that question of how many did we apply for?

[00:25:52] Konna Beeson: What’s our pipeline look like? How much time do we spend on each one? Those sorts of things. ’cause there is, generally speaking, a calculation you can do to work out again. Well at this point. Uh, you know, I could do twice the amount of work and 

[00:26:04] Multiple Voices: yeah, 

[00:26:04] Konna Beeson: exact same amount of income, so it’s actually better for me to do half of them spend, spend that extra time on potentially better writing.

[00:26:12] Konna Beeson: But also that relationship building, which you know, quite often, if you can get that weigh in of some kind, is going to be far more impactful to your success than probably anything else. Um. I 

[00:26:23] Simon Scriver: mean, it looks like, like a clear indicator of that law of diminishing returns where it’s like, yeah, you can keep squeezing out the more hours you do, but the, like you said, there’s that sweet spot where you are putting the right amount of time into them and, and still taking care of yourself because I imagine you two have seen a lot of the burnout where.

[00:26:41] Simon Scriver: Because it is a never ending thing, you know, fundraising, you can always do one more. So I, I, I do love that you’ve touched on that in terms of being realistic about what you should be putting into this and not just trying to squeeze out as much from every fundraiser as possible. I appreciate that. Yeah.

[00:26:56] Amy Stevens: We see staffings under huge pressure, don’t we, Connor? Client teams we work with who just need that extra capacity. They’ve been pulled in every direction. So having that focus to go, okay, I’ve got 20 applications to do. Is, is a good thing rather than looking at an endless list of 200 and and feeling overwhelmed by it.

[00:27:15] Konna Beeson: Yeah. And some of it’s around actually being able to use things like this to set sort of some expectations for boards as well. Mm-hmm. Which is something we talked about the first time we pulled the analysis for this together. Um, is that, you know, especially if you’ve got maybe a board of trustees that just don’t know fundraising as well, you know, you could.

[00:27:32] Konna Beeson: Perfectly be excused to think, okay, we raised this much last year and we did X amount of applications, let’s do 10% more. Um, that will get 10% more income perfectly, I guess fine of a, of a rationale if you’re not in fundraising and dunno the sector. So 

[00:27:46] Multiple Voices: mm-hmm. 

[00:27:47] Konna Beeson: It’s really helpful to have sort of year on year validity to these sort of things.

[00:27:51] Konna Beeson: So anyone having those issues can say, actually you need to trust me. Like if this is the pipeline, this is the best route. Um. To actually help avoid burnout as well. 

[00:28:01] Simon Scriver: I think that’s a great point. And a reminder, you can get a copy of this report@giftedphilanthropy.com. Um, and I think that’s a great idea to bring it to your board or bring it to your CEO if you get, are getting that unrealistic pressure to show, show what’s going, going on there.

[00:28:14] Simon Scriver: I think that’s a great suggestion. Um, one of the, one of the caveats always on benchmarking reports, and you said it yourself at the beginning, Connor, is, is, you know, you have to sometimes be a bit careful comparing ourselves. ’cause an average is. Can sometimes be very misleading to, to, to what an individual is going through, uh, or what a listener is going through.

[00:28:32] Simon Scriver: And, and one of the things you delved into is the different types of causes and different areas and what they respond to. ’cause I know that that’s, in my fundraising career, that’s one of, been one of the constant, no matter what, who you talk to. All the other causes are much easier to fundraise for 

[00:28:47] Multiple Voices: whoever you 

[00:28:47] Simon Scriver: speak to is working for the, the most difficult.

[00:28:50] Simon Scriver: So, but, but did you see a, a, a kind of cha uh, a difference between the different areas? 

[00:28:56] Konna Beeson: Uh, yes. Uh, so, um, what I did in terms of to, to retain the statistical, you know, validity of the findings as well. I looked at the different types of charities, uh, like sort of the most common ones. He took part, so those were, that were at least 10, I think it was 10 to 30% of the sample size for each of these different areas.

[00:29:13] Konna Beeson: And I, I looked into the success rates of those as well as the total income. They raised sort of compared to the average, so you can help benchmark as well. So in terms of success rates, some of the, the headlines, if you will, is that, um, those in the disability, um, sector had the highest repeat funder success rate of 75%.

[00:29:34] Konna Beeson: Um, but they had the lowest cold success rate of 22%. Um, so kind of a, an either side situation there. Um, arts and culture and like community, um, charities had the highest cold success rate. Or 34%. And Heritage, um, they had sort of the, the highest overall, uh, success rate of about 50%. Um, and actually they, they had the lowest number of applications sent as well.

[00:29:58] Konna Beeson: We ended up averaging about 6.6, um, which is, there’s lots of different reasons for that. Amy, I know you’ve, we’ve talked about 

[00:30:04] Amy Stevens: Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because we can mull it over and, you know, I can give my opinion on it, but we never really know the reason why, obviously. Yeah. But I think, for example, with Heritage, so.

[00:30:16] Amy Stevens: Heritage First is education. For example, education. You have a cohort of people, don’t you? As a university, you’ve got your past students and your current students as a constituency to go and ask for money. Mm-hmm. So they may be less reliant on having to work on those grants, whereas I. A heritage venue or a cultural organization.

[00:30:34] Amy Stevens: You may have a membership scheme, but it’s not quite the same. So they’re probably historically more reliant on grants. Um, and I would say as well, having those lots of capital projects and bigger capital projects within that field health as well. Um, you know, you have discrete build projects or equipment or, or what have you, don’t you, so it is interesting to see how yeah, the different groups crop up.

[00:31:01] Amy Stevens: So. I think kind of was the, the cold success was high for the more community based organizations, wasn’t it? 

[00:31:08] Konna Beeson: Yeah. Arts sort of culture and community is how Yeah, 

[00:31:11] Amy Stevens: we, we felt that might be due to a funder priority shift because we’ve seen that move towards grassroots organizations. So more first time new organizations may have been funded, which could cause that skew, but it’ll be interesting to see how that maps out in next year’s report as well, and see if we see any other correlations.

[00:31:31] Simon Scriver: Yeah, I mean, I, I assume we are seeing kind of, there is that more fashionable trend that comes in every year. I mean, I think like climate change are obviously very much in the news that maybe weren’t so much years ago. I know in Ireland the homeless crisis is, is you know, of epidemic proportions and so you begin to see a shift towards that.

[00:31:50] Simon Scriver: How quickly does it fluctuate or how, maybe more importantly, how responsive do fundraisers need to be to that? 

[00:31:57] Amy Stevens: I, I think one of the main drivers of that, what we’ve seen a lot of here is the generational wealth shift. So private family trust and foundations particularly who. Um, you know, we’re, we’re military funders.

[00:32:12] Amy Stevens: We’re heritage arts culture. Now the younger generations are taking over it’s social causes, it’s environment, it’s homelessness. 

[00:32:20] Simon Scriver: They’re so woke, they’re all so woke. 

[00:32:23] Amy Stevens: But there is a real shift in that we, we’ve kind of seen priorities changing as the younger generations wanna fund what is important to them.

[00:32:30] Amy Stevens: So that’s interesting, I think. Yeah. 

[00:32:34] Konna Beeson: I, I suppose almost the other side to that as well as like, just being sort of the funder’s own sort of interest in deciding where to go as well is that we’re actually, you know, COVID was five years ago. Um, what, what happened during COVID as well as, you know, everything else, um, was that we suddenly sort of along, um.

[00:32:50] Konna Beeson: Along with the, you know, the cost of living crisis and all these sort of things happening in that sort of same two year period so to speak, it was that all of a sudden we’ve got hundreds of thousands of completely grassroots, you know, charities. Yeah. Um, that had never really had to apply for grant funding before.

[00:33:05] Konna Beeson: ’cause they were always fine. They would do their gala ball and a few things, and that they, they would sustain the income that they needed. All of a sudden they’re all looking at their budget spreadsheets and thinking we can no longer just survive just off of what we were doing. So seeking grant funding is the natural next step, but that’s, that is the vast majority of the total number of charities are in that sort of the far under, you know, under a million.

[00:33:28] Konna Beeson: Um. So what’s happening there is that I think there was somewhat of a push as well for, um, that funders identified this and saying there is a massive need of rise. We are gonna quite literally see small charities at the backbone of every community shutting their doors forever. And I think there was an adjustment there as well to be more receptive to cold applications from smaller organizations.

[00:33:48] Konna Beeson: So it’s almost a bit, almost forced, forced their hand in some regards, if that makes sense. But 

[00:33:53] Multiple Voices: mm-hmm. 

[00:33:55] Simon Scriver: Yeah, that’s can fund, I mean, how much can fundraisers respond to these like global trends? And can you change your, I mean, I suppose you’re changing your ask. You’re changing your, not necessarily your project, but the way you present it based on those terms.

[00:34:09] Simon Scriver: How fluid do we need to be? 

[00:34:11] Amy Stevens: I, I think this is a really, really tricky subject because yes, you can look at, there may be a big funder who is all about climate and you think, can we tie in one of our projects to make it climate? But we are always really clear with our clients of what is your core purpose?

[00:34:29] Amy Stevens: Okay. Don’t change who you are and what you do to meet a funder’s criteria because you’re not being true to yourself as a charity and what you’re there for. Mm-hmm. So, I, I really struggle with that personally. I dunno how you, how you feel about it. 

[00:34:44] Konna Beeson: Yeah. Well, I. It always comes down to the case with support at the end of the day.

[00:34:47] Konna Beeson: But if you, you, I think so I don’t like saying this, but it sometimes comes down to just a feel as when you’re doing a trust application, for example, you kind of know if you are kind of trying to shoehorn Yeah. Um, you know, the, the things into make it fit, you know, trying to plug your square into the circle hole kind of, kind of thing.

[00:35:04] Konna Beeson: Yeah. 

[00:35:05] Multiple Voices: But I, I 

[00:35:06] Konna Beeson: do think, um, even we talk about this a lot, um, anyway, but I think this is actually where that relationship building side of things is really important for. Um, not just because it enables you to get ahead so funded that may have been in your pipeline. If you’re able to reach out to them, you, you’ll know first or early or, or whatever it is that if you are actually in with a chance, even though you may 

[00:35:27] Multiple Voices: mm-hmm.

[00:35:28] Konna Beeson: It may seem on paper, on their website, like, uh, you know, what we fund in eligibility. It may think, yeah, great. That seems to fit. But actually it’s, when you speak to them, you realize that no, we’re really only looking, you know, the border, this type of things. Um, so that’s really important. But the other side of that as well is that if you’ve got these, you know, good and you know, warmer relationships that you’ve built with funders, even when and if they do change their, uh, strategic direction.

[00:35:53] Konna Beeson: It’s not necessarily gonna put you out. In fact, I literally just secured a, a 20,000 grant for a, um, one of our clients this week, um, from a funder that, um, changed their strategy in the last six months and said, absolutely we do not fund this type of work. But we had a. A somewhat of a way in and we, we framed it that way and not a shoehorn.

[00:36:16] Konna Beeson: So that was kind of a persuasive shoehorning, if you will. But I don’t, I don’t have a good enough phrase for it. Um, but that’s, that’s, it’s a 

[00:36:23] Simon Scriver: skill of fundraising, isn’t it? It’s matching. It’s matching the people who wanna help with the people in need. And I mean, that’s what you guys, you know, that’s your track record.

[00:36:30] Simon Scriver: So it’s, it’s great. This, um, in terms of the report work, uh, ’cause I’m conscious of time, but what else jumped out? In terms of overall trends, like what else would you, did you come away from it that. I suppose you’re gonna apply as you work with your clients. 

[00:36:45] Konna Beeson: Yeah, so I’ll give probably the two main, uh, trends and takeaways if you will.

[00:36:48] Konna Beeson: The first one is a, I would say a really positive thing, um, which is that most trust, uh, fundraisers that took part in the survey actually forecasted their income over the next 12 months to grow or stay the same compared to the amount of people that said, um, they expected it to, to decrease, which is.

[00:37:04] Konna Beeson: Great. Um, because I know there’s a lot of gloom in the sector and, and, and things like that. And I think that really paints a good, a good picture. And I, I did look at the different types of charities and it was, there was no real difference between that. So that’s always good to know. Um, I suppose the other thing is, you know, we talked about the number of trusts not accepting unsolicited applications anymore.

[00:37:22] Konna Beeson: Um, 78% of people that took part said that they were finding that to be more. Of the case than ever. Um, so what we did in this survey was that we asked for those of you that have been successful in, um, getting funding from funders that are no longer accepting unsolicited applications. Um, like how did you do it?

[00:37:39] Konna Beeson: Mm-hmm. And, um, 35% of them was due to some kind of connection, whether it’s historic, whether it’s ’cause you know, a board, maybe it’s, uh, an existing funder of yours. Um, we’re happy to introduce you to another fund that you didn’t know of as well. Um, so that’s really important. Um, 23% approached anyway and got funding.

[00:37:58] Konna Beeson: Um, 

[00:37:59] Simon Scriver: I wanna, I wanna start on that because that’s certainly not something we would endorse or promote that know, but it’s, it’s quite an interesting statistic, I think, and it 

[00:38:09] Amy Stevens: could be a bit because. I, I, I’m a don’t take no for an answer kind of person. So sometimes if it’s no unsolicited approaches, but you are the perfect fit, 

[00:38:19] Multiple Voices: yeah, 

[00:38:20] Amy Stevens: I’ll still contact ’em and say, listen, I know you’re not accepting them, but we’ve got this project, so maybe you could let us know when you’re coming back online.

[00:38:26] Amy Stevens: Yeah. Yada, yada, yada. Just to try and start a conversation. So it may be that some of those approached anyway, actually. Did the relationship build? 

[00:38:36] Simon Scriver: Yeah, it’s a soft approach. And, and, and going back to the, the stat before Connor said about, um, 35% due to connections, it’s almost like you might not be accepting, but if there’s an introduction, if there’s a referral, and, and I think that that really jumped out at me at how many were due to connections.

[00:38:52] Konna Beeson: Yeah, I think that the last important point on that is that 19% said that they were actually approached proactively. 

[00:39:01] Simon Scriver: Wow. And 

[00:39:01] Konna Beeson: the importance of that is because we, I, I’m not gonna say obviously who it is, but we had several people that, um, said that in the survey, left a comment to say that we were, we know that they found us.

[00:39:13] Konna Beeson: Via chat pt. Um, and that’s because, you know, uh, we are just actually just, I thought we, I thought 

[00:39:20] Simon Scriver: we could go one podcast without mentioning chatt. Unfortunately not. No. Uh, 

[00:39:25] Konna Beeson: but we just, we’ve, funny enough, we’ve just done a blog on this and our website around, you know, uh, you never really needed to be, you know, visible, um, for a trust fundraising point of view.

[00:39:34] Konna Beeson: But now, you know, especially I would say the majority of funders are under resourced under. Staff and things like that, why wouldn’t they use the tools that they’ve got to try and find a proactively find,

[00:39:53] Simon Scriver: I 

[00:39:53] Amy Stevens: think’s got a connection issue. 

[00:39:58] Simon Scriver: Oh, Connie, you back? Can you hear me? I’ll just make sure you are. Oh, you’re freezing again. 

[00:40:05] Amy Stevens: Yeah. I think it, it leads on to kind of the, our last point really about fundraising and AI and, sorry, and how we need back, we do need to be up on it despite, yeah. Sometimes battling against it a little bit.

[00:40:16] Amy Stevens: Really, 

[00:40:18] Simon Scriver: I, I, I’m gonna hold it here and just kind of, can you hear me

[00:40:25] Simon Scriver: Well? I don’t worry. I’ll edit this bit out, but I’ll just, I’ll just try and get Connor back. I think his internet 

[00:40:33] Amy Stevens: might have. Yeah, I can 

[00:40:34] Simon Scriver: am my back probably now. I can hear. You can can hear you now. Can you hear me right? Yeah, that went completely. Sorry about that. Dunno why. Yeah, I think there’s a little bit of a delay there, but we’ll just make sure there’s nothing else running on your computer or anything or anyone playing Xbox or anything.

[00:40:52] Simon Scriver: No, no, no, no. I, I message my girlfriend 

[00:40:54] Amy Stevens: background streaming video or, yeah, 

[00:40:56] Simon Scriver: yeah, yeah. Just download and stuff. Um, that’s, well, well, we’ll, we’ll trim it together. So basically, um, we talk about the chat GBT thing. If we can pick up from there. So, Connie, you, you. 

[00:41:11] Konna Beeson: Yeah, go for it. Yeah, I’ll say the, the point again.

[00:41:13] Konna Beeson: So yeah, I mean, what we found is that 19% of people were approached directly and, uh, a lot of them gave a comment in the survey to say that they were told by the funder that they found them. Because of they chatt, GPTs, you know, top, you know, X types of charities in the Southwest or whatever it was. So that is really important because, uh, we’ve just done a blog on this, on our website around, um, something called a EO, uh, which is different to SEO, which is effectively how do you become visible on like, you know, conversational AI platforms like chat, GPT, because.

[00:41:49] Konna Beeson: It just makes total sense that funders themselves, as they’re under-resourced, are gonna be using tools like that as well to proactively find charities to support and, you know, you wanna be visible if you can. So looking into things like that is gonna be, I think, I think within the next like three to five years especially, we’re gonna see a very stark difference in charities that have done that well and those that haven’t.

[00:42:09] Simon Scriver: I think it’s such an interesting point and we’ve noticed the same with the Fundraising Everywhere. Website is more traffic coming from chat, GBT and, and yeah, a lot of conversations, but people not really knowing how to address it. So it’s interesting to hear that you’ve got a, an article in on your website around the A EO.

[00:42:26] Simon Scriver: Um, stuff, but it’s, it’s, it’s, I mean, talk, talk me through it a little bit because essentially the chat, it’s like scraping information from your blogs, from your social media, from basically everywhere you put out. So by, by an increased presence, you mean kind of general marketing, general branding out there.

[00:42:44] Simon Scriver: It, it differs 

[00:42:46] Konna Beeson: in the sense that this is a, I’m gonna really dumb down SEO now and I hate myself for it, but that’s perfect for me. Perfect. The beginner’s guide to this is that, you know, SEO is sort of jamming your blogs on your website and things like that with all the keywords so that Google eventually knows this is, this organization is the expert in this field because of the keywords that.

[00:43:08] Konna Beeson: The, the converse to that, which is now around a EO is because, um, things like chat, GPT, they aren’t just about a question answer type facility. They are built to be conversational. That’s actually what they’re for. Um, so. You are, you are more likely to be sort of featured within that if you’ve got more sort of, you know, conversational pieces, like, um, and it’s easier to understand and it can read the resources on your website, for example, if they’re in that sort of, it, rather than just keywords.

[00:43:41] Konna Beeson: ’cause the keywords don’t tell you enough. It, it is more than clever enough to know and it wants, you know, if someone’s typing, you know, who does the best, you know. I don’t know. Um, support for Learn Disabled people in in, in Bristol and Somerset. If you’ve got a lot of resources on your website, which you’re talking about, you know, this is why we are the best, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:44:01] Konna Beeson: Or this is what we do to support, learn disabled people in the Southwest. And it’s, it’s. Rather than just sort of jamming keywords. I think I, I’ve really dumb down that it is just really well worth looking into it. Um, 

[00:44:11] Simon Scriver: yeah, it’s, it’s so interesting ’cause I think like PE people already thought they could game the algorithm a bit and, and maybe not very well a lot of the time, but I think it’s gonna be, you know, almost impossible to game it.

[00:44:22] Simon Scriver: Like you have to have good quality information. You have to be genuinely pushing stuff out there to be noticed by these, these, um, tools. That’s my feeling. I dunno. Yeah. In terms, in terms of ai, you, you also talk a little bit about how fundraisers themselves are using it. What, what, what were you finding in that?

[00:44:42] Konna Beeson: Yeah, so we asked, you know, like how much time you spend in your activity and things like that. But as well as, um, do you use AI in any of your trust fundraising work? And what do you, what do you value most and least. Um, in terms of helping you, you know, grow income. So what we found is, I was quite surprised by this, but 42% of people said they haven’t used any AI tools at all, which I was, I was very surprised by that.

[00:45:05] Konna Beeson: Um, of those that did it was, they said it was most valuable for, say, cutting word counts or like, you know, consolidating work you’ve already done. So, a case of supports for, you know, three different ones, a different word, learns and trying to consolidate it before you edit it. Yeah. Uh, no. Huge sort of shock there.

[00:45:23] Konna Beeson: The biggest thing was actually, in terms of prospect research, um, most people found it useful for getting a higher quantity of prospect research, but the least useful for the quality of prospect research. Yeah. Which effectively you can say it is kind of pointless in that sense. However, even as from at the time that we did this survey.

[00:45:43] Konna Beeson: The ability of tools like Check GBT and, and, and Google’s deep research models and things like that have already developed so much, um, that it’s going to be, I mean, we can already do now very high quality realtime research on websites and it’s gonna advance very, very quickly. So I can actually see that area being a big opportunity actually for the sector sector to, to be able to spend less time on research, have very good quality prospect research, and be able to spend more of that time on the writing and the relationships.

[00:46:11] Konna Beeson: I think. Um, yeah, 

[00:46:13] Amy Stevens: I think it’s really helpful for a bit of fact finding as well. So I was writing an application for a, a small NGO in Kenya recently, and I needed some additional demographic stats of like a comparable area to back up what I was saying. Put it in chat, GPT, and then obviously you have to fact check.

[00:46:32] Amy Stevens: Mm-hmm. In, instead of having to kind of go through, you know, 30 different Google pages that came up, gave me an answer that I could then just go to. Is this a bonafide source? Yes. Okay, great. You know, so it is very time consum uh, time saving for things like that. Yeah. 

[00:46:50] Simon Scriver: Yeah, and I think a really important point about the fact checking because sometimes you, you literally just have to push back, but it’s so true.

[00:46:55] Simon Scriver: I mean, even just to get you pointed in the right direction or to make you think of things you hadn’t thought about. Yeah. I mean, one thing, one thing I’ve, I’ve found is like putting in things like grant applications in and asking it to like. Dissect it and tell you what’s wrong with it. And a lot of it you’re like, nah, you don’t know Stupid Chat chatt.

[00:47:12] Simon Scriver: But every once in a while it’s like, ah, that’s a good point. I haven’t thought about that. I think there is a lot of value in it. And I think, like you said, Connor, it’s changing so quickly and already changed since you’ve written this, that, how, how did fundraisers stay on top of it? I mean, obviously fantastic training@fundraisingeverywhere.com, uh, and also by reading your stuff@giftedphilanthropy.com, but where, where.

[00:47:33] Simon Scriver: Where do you guys, as trusts, grant application people, where do you stay up to date with this? I mean, 

[00:47:39] Konna Beeson: I think. Well, literally what you just said. I mean, you know, platforms like fundraising everywhere and all these things out there. Just be being mindful of, uh, you know, the sort of, I guess the leaders in, uh, the sort of the wider sector, not just in the UK as well, but this is, this is a global sort of fundraising area as well.

[00:47:55] Konna Beeson: So looking, you know, to the US and things like that as well to see, you know, who’s speaking on these topics with the most knowledge. I think that’s really important. Mm-hmm. Um, it is hard to keep up and then it’s hard to know. Everyone sees people on LinkedIn talking about, you know, the latest buzzwords in AI and they do the really, really, really long posts and.

[00:48:10] Konna Beeson: Can’t stand it. Um, um, it’s hard to know who’s actually knows what they’re talking about and who doesn’t. Yeah. So I think that’s where organizations like yours are, are really valuable in getting the right speakers who are evidence experts in, you know, in AI and fundraising and things like that. Um, things are gonna change very, very quickly, but I think in a good way.

[00:48:28] Konna Beeson: Um mm-hmm. If, if we can overcome what would inevitably be sort of a skills and knowledge hurdle, um, in how to really use this for prospect research in particular, um, because. The, the things will advance far more quickly than everyone can sort of catch up and learn how to adapt their approach. I think we’re gonna have, there, there’s gonna be inevitably some kind of skills, knowledge gap and mm-hmm.

[00:48:51] Konna Beeson: So, you know, especially maybe smaller charities that aren’t gonna have, like, you know, training budgets and conference budgets and stuff. I think that’s gonna be quite a, i, I suspect it’ll be a stark difference, which is something to be very mindful of. Um, over the next few years, 

[00:49:04] Amy Stevens: my take is, let’s use it as a tool, but let’s not forget about human relationships.

[00:49:10] Simon Scriver: Mary, I love it. The, um, any, anyone who comes out with that, when we talk about anyone who uses the word human, I’m like, I’m in love with this person. Um, okay, so what does this mean for, um, for like the, the average fundraiser Who’s listening to this? Someone who’s back in their office, maybe a solo. Grant, um, fundraiser, or maybe they’re doing it as part of their job.

[00:49:30] Simon Scriver: What, what would you kind of take out of this or take back to your clients as, as maybe action points? I know that’s hard to kind of do, to do a to do list, but how would it feed into their strategy, do you think? 

[00:49:42] Amy Stevens: So for us, we’ve seen. Lots of small charities particularly need to diversify. So I think this shows us that.

[00:49:51] Amy Stevens: Is trust and foundation still a valid, you know, source to, to obtain your funds from? Yes, absolutely. If you’re doing it properly, but things are shifting. Um, and particularly in COVID, you know, we saw hospices who had relied too heavily on charity shop income and then, you know, they were closed and they needed to really diversify.

[00:50:13] Amy Stevens: We’ve had others who relied on statutory funding, which potentially given current situations could be, you know, going down. Um. Let’s not forget things like legacy fundraising. Um, quite often charities put that off, uh, and, and well, yeah, it doesn’t yield immediately, does it? And actually have they invested in that year on year.

[00:50:35] Amy Stevens: So it’s bringing all the strands together, including the trust and foundations and using research like this to inform your trust and foundation strategy. Um, but just trying to be realistic and think, you know, where are the, the income sources for our organization and what, what do we need to invest our time in really?

[00:50:56] Konna Beeson: If, if there’s one like really practical takeaway that probably everyone could do as well is exactly based on what Amy just said around all the consolidating all the different areas of fundraising, uh, that you could or are doing, is making sure that you’re not working in silo as much as possible. So even though.

[00:51:13] Konna Beeson: That would often happen. I would say ENT trusts more than any other area. We’ve talked about relationship building and the, and the importance of that. More several times in this, go away and ask whoever it is, needs to ask in your leadership team. When was the last time we’ve done a network mapping exercise of our board, of our corporate partners, of our community groups, our major donors, and things like that.

[00:51:34] Konna Beeson: Even that could potentially, um, massively benefit, um, you know, link you to funders you didn’t know existed with a really clear way in, um, you know, it’s just really, really valuable, um, to do things like that. 

[00:51:46] Simon Scriver: Yeah, I think, and you are, that’s kind of peppered throughout the report and the findings in the report is how important those relationships and ongoing relationships are.

[00:51:53] Simon Scriver: So it’s, it’s not. Like call fundraising. It’s not just like a chop shop, just getting the numbers in and then them disappearing. It’s, it’s actually putting in time to building those quality relationships, which is very clear. Uh, coming outta this, this has been great. This has been really interesting. Uh, con of, remind us, remind our listeners where is the best place to, um, get this report.

[00:52:14] Simon Scriver: So if you go to 

[00:52:14] Konna Beeson: gifted philanthropy.com and then you can go on our fundraising resources section of the website. The, uh, the original webinar we did on there, uh, going through it line by. Um, and also if you go to the bottom of the website, uh, as well, you can subscribe to our mailing list, which aside from our mailing list, uh, purposes is you’ll get first dibs on doing it next year, um, and getting the survey next year and things like that as well, which we’re gonna, as I said, we’re gonna really want a lot of that feedback from people to inform the next survey that we’ll probably do at the very end of this year.

[00:52:47] Konna Beeson: So sign up to that if you can make sure you respond to the next survey when it comes out, and we all help each other. 

[00:52:52] Simon Scriver: A hundred percent. Yeah, if we can get more people responding to this, then we’ve got more useful data. So I really do recommend everyone go to gifted philanthropy.com, get a copy of the, uh, report and sign up some email unless you will find the links.

[00:53:03] Simon Scriver: Um, in the description of this, where do we find you guys? What’s your social media? De jo? Amy? Do you hang out on LinkedIn or what your We do hang out 

[00:53:12] Amy Stevens: on LinkedIn. Yeah. Uh, that’s our only platform, really, LinkedIn. Um, but yeah, you can reach us through the website or on LinkedIn and, uh. I’m happy to have a chat.

[00:53:23] Simon Scriver: Amazing. Very good. Um, yeah. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much guys. Do check out Amy Stevens and Caron on link, uh, on LinkedIn, uh, and do check out Gifted Philanthropy. Thank you both so much for your time. Thank you all for listening. Um, don’t forget to see what else is coming up on fundraising everywhere.com.

[00:53:40] Simon Scriver: We have our Trust of Major Donors conference in December. Um, but we’ll be, have, have plenty which is relevant to you in, in the run up to that. So do keep an eye on fundraising everywhere.com. Thank you everyone and have a good day. 

[00:53:53] Alex Aggidis: Thank you so much for listening to the Fundraising Everywhere podcast. If you’re enjoying this podcast, why not share it with a fundraising friend?

[00:54:00] Alex Aggidis: 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.

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