Cracking Charity Chat

Guest host, Fidelis Navas chats with Barrie Hodge, Head of Fundraising and Communications at St Basils, a youth homelessness charity based in the West Midlands. They chat about transitioning from a career as a commercial radio producer to a fundraising and communications leader; the importance of empathy, especially considering the impact of the coronavirus these past 12 months; and the pros and cons of PowerPoint in your fundraising and comms activities - resulting in an avoid where possible perspective from Barrie.

A chat with Paul Streets, CEO of Lloyds Bank Foundation, recorded July 2020. Paul shares his leadership journey, including the influence of working in the family's greengrocers in his teens, and as a social worker early in his career. Paul talks about some inspirational people who have influenced his work; Lloyds Bank Foundation's response to the crisis and its new Covid Recovery Fund; the new leadership style emerging with particular reference to infrastructure organisations and our sector's collective ability to influence Government.

A chat with Wayne Murray, Director of Strategy at the agency Audience. We cover organisational and funding strategy post Covid-19. We talk about the impact of Covid-19, the fundraising model being broken, who's nailed their FR and comms during the crisis, and the good bits that have come out of the crisis that we should keep.

Chat with Nathan Sparling, CEO of HIV Scotland. We discuss a lot! Being a small charity CEO, being under 30, punching above your weight as an organisation, imposter syndrome, turning around an organisation on the brink of closure, and the value of being a drag artist on charity leadership skills.

A chat with Ross McCulloch from Third Sector Lab - the guy that knows what we need to know about digital. We chat digital transformation (what even is it?), digital culture, Digital Trustees and Digital Leaders (the latter through SCVO), the role of infrastructure organisations in supporting charities to get better at and scale up digital transformation. Ross gets ranty about on-line forms, I talk myself into a hole of nonsense and there's an unplanned critique of funding. Enjoy!

A chat with Matthew Sherrington, charity strategy and communications expert. We chat about his journey from starting as a volunteer with Oxfam in 1989 and going on to support and lead various Oxfam teams across the world in the nineties. We also cover his experience of turning around Greenpeace USA in the noughties, aliging strategy, comms, fundraising and campaigning, mobilising people to come together and take action in the real world, and representation of the people we support. And a bit of medieval horror.

In this chat with Sarah Hill, CEO of the Yorkshire charity IDAS - Independent Domestic Abuse Service - we cover: the commissioning environment and how IDAS has responded by changing its model of working (how and where), collaboration with others, the growth of the charity from a few hundred thousand turnover and a handful of staff to a £4m turnover and 120 staff today, and Sarah's leadership journey. We also chat about Prince Andrew and why only cats need meat. And Sarah refuses to sing. Enjoy!

A fun chat with Simon Scriver, fundraising consultant, trainer and speaker. We cover some top tips for small (in fact all) charity fundraising; fundraising being about relationships - not just asking - and how to develop relationship fundraising across your organisation; corporate partnerships; why mimicking the big charities isn't the way to go; and somewhat controversially, conference refreshments. Inexplicably, Anneka Rice gets a mention too.

A chat with the lovely Kathryn Holloway, Head of Individual Giving and Supporter Care at Friends of the Earth. We chat all things direct marketing: recruitment, the welcome journey, digital, talking to supporters, internal comms and basic communication being at the heart of it all! Should you get Instagram? What was the heating section in BHS like? Why is GDPR actually a good thing? Grab your earphones and find out.

A chat with Louise Firth, Director of Fundraising at Refuge and a Member of the Institute of Fundraising's Expert Panel on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. We chat about the Refuge, fundraising for 'difficult' causes and their new fundraising strategy, and the IoF's Change Collective strategy - drivers, initial activities in the strategy, affinity networks, being a role model and what you can do to support the Change Collective Movement.