Guest blog from Caroline Richardson, Director of LarkOwl
I am a fundraising consultant, trusts and major gifts practitioner, strategist, writer and Substack bestseller.
My expertise is in trusts and foundations, major gifts and capital appeals and I’ve raised millions for good causes over a twenty year career. I run LarkOwl with my partner Tony and deliver one to one consultancy, supporting non profits with:
– fundraising strategy and planning (across all disciplines including commercial / earned income)
– delivery of trusts and major gift fundraising
– reviewing and optimising existing trusts and major gifts programmes
– capital appeal planning
For experienced fundraisers who might be seeing their success rates nosediving, it’s easy to attribute recent results to the current trust fundraising landscape. You’re not alone if you think it resembles a giant binfire (or dumpster fire for my US pals).
What used to work apparently doesn’t anymore.
Rather than sticking our heads in the sand or carrying on regardless and hoping desperately for a return to the good old days, we need to put on our big girl pants and be open to trying something new, because (in the words of Marshall Goldsmith), what got us here, won’t get us there.
Here are a few thoughts from me on how to continue to be the fundraising legend that you are, despite external factors conspiring against you.
For me personally, I’ve been taking a major gifts approach to trust fundraising over the past couple of years and it’s been yielding results.
Here’s what this means in practice?
- Extending your research beyond a trust’s list of annual gifts and looking in depth at the trustees – who they are, what they do and where there might be existing connections between them as individuals and your charity.
- Taking a sledgehammer to your cold prospect list and reducing it as far as possible to a minimum. Include only funders where you’re confident there’s clear alignment on priorities from both parties and where you can make a strong case for inclusion in their grant making. The days of ‘taking a punt’ or ‘sending a letter to a long shot’ are over my friend.
- Taking (little) risks with your writing. I’m really trying to be more honest, more open and more personal in my emails and DMs to funders; refusing to shy away from humour and where needed, rage. Call it the perimenopause, but ultimately, I’m saying it like it is a lot more than I used to. I’m not advocating for the complete rejection of ‘professionalism’ (whatever the hell that means anyway!), but if you say something from the heart, you’ll stand out from the bots and in doing so, you may increase your chances of a meaningful dialogue.
- Speaking of bots, I’m personally, mostly against using AI. In a fundraising context, Large Language Models are sold as the answer to a problem which never actually existed. I will not use them for application writing and feel generally very sceptical about the erosion of human intelligence, attention and creativity (see also Cory Doctorow’s ‘enshittification’ and Rosie Oldham’s excellent piece on AI). You may feel pressure to use LLM’s to ‘streamline’ and ‘optimise’, but be reassured (from the voice of experience) that relationship-focused fundraising can thrive perfectly well without most technological ‘solutions’.
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This post was written by a guest contributor. The views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect the positions of Fundraising Everywhere. Content from guest authors may reflect different approaches, experiences, or perspectives to those covered in other events and training.