Leading and raising funds for a small charity is demanding enough. The stakes get even higher when you need to raise a lot more money for a capital appeal.

The Berin Centre is a small community charity in rural Oxfordshire in the UK. To better serve their community, they decided to build a new cafe. Laura Harte is Director of the charity. In the podcast she shares why this project was so important for people, examples of how they raised the funds and practical tips. She also explains why properly involving the community was fundamental to the success of the whole project. 

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

Major Donors can make a huge difference to fundraising income, but fundraising with High Net Worth people can also be really challenging. 

Debbie Johnson has been making wonderful progress in her fundraising. In the year she took part in Bright Spot’s Major Gifts Mastery programme, she increased major donor income for her wildlife charity by 200% compared to the previous year... and these wonderful results continue to flow.

In this podcast she and Rob discuss several powerful distinctions from the training that have helped achieve this success, including: a powerful strategy she uses every day to improve relationships with donors; a technique that improves results when she meets supporters; being yourself; listening skills; and an insight that transformed one major gift from five figures to an amazing six figure value.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

Community fundraising is an invaluable income stream for many charities, both through income raised directly and all the value these relationships add in other fundraising areas.

Punyapriya Singh is Senior Head of Supporter Engagement at Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice, and was named Fundraiser of the Year in the CIOF National Fundraising Awards. In this conversation, she explains the approach which has helped her charity achieve fabulous growth in public fundraising income in recent years.

In particular, she explains the importance of caring about and adding value to relationships with your supporters (rather than focusing primarily on money). She brings her ideas to life with examples of the stunning growth this thoughtful, relationship-first strategy has helped achieve, including a wonderful event for families, a golf day worth £100,000 and the success of their £12m capital appeal.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

Fundraising with trusts and foundations has become ever more competitive recently.

What can you do to increase your success rate with these funders? 

Atul is a curious and shrewd fundraiser who has spent many years exploring how to grow fundraising income in this area. In this conversation Atul and Rob discuss several of his most effective strategies. It includes ways to find more funders who definitely care about your cause; what to call your project (spoiler, it makes an astonishing difference to results!) and strategies to leverage game-changing bids by sequencing them with smaller, easier ones.  

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

Most fundraisers know how crucial it is to build genuine relationships with people who care about your cause. But doing it in practice can be far from easy! 

Amy Swart is a very experienced relationship fundraiser and is Director of Fundraising and Communications at the suicide-prevention charity James’ Place. Building warm, two-way relationships with supporters, including major donors, trusts and foundations, is fundamental to the charity’s approach. This mindset has been a major factor in the wonderful growth they have achieved in recent years. 

In this conversation Amy shares her approach, with practical tips and encouragement for fundraisers and charity leaders determined to build excellent, long-term relationships with supporters.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

There are plenty of really good books specifically about fundraising. We’ve also found it invaluable for fundraisers to read well-written books on related subjects. But which ones are worth your time? If you’re on the lookout for a good read and some different perspectives, we’ve created a Books that Inspire Fundraisers – The Super Six, which you can access with this link.

And in this episode Bright Spot trainers Rob and Ben share the first three on our list. We explain why we love each book, and a bunch of ideas you can apply in your fundraising, even if you don’t have time to read the books.

Among other things, this conversation includes: a fascinating insight about how to improve valuable skills more quickly; two ideas for inspiring supporters; and a little-known technique that increases your confidence in important meetings.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

How to change what’s not working. Sometimes in fundraising, things aren’t working, you feel overwhelmed, and you don’t know where to start. 

The excellent book Reset by Dan Heath is all about how to turn things around when you feel stuck. In this podcast Rob talks to Craig about ways you can apply the Reset techniques to solve difficult fundraising problems. 

Heath suggests that in most difficult situations there is one crucial ‘leverage point’ – something that will potentially make the biggest difference. The key is to work out what this is and then stack far more of your resources on making progress here. As you make clear progress, your new momentum makes other things easier too.

Craig and Rob share examples of this approach helping fundraising teams to solve important problems, including how one charity reduced the time it takes to send out thank you letters, from 3 weeks to just 2 days.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

Growing your confidence to talk to supporters makes a big difference.

What’s the key to increasing High Value Fundraising Income for your charity? Build stronger relationships with people who care about your cause. 

There are many ways to do this, but even in this tech-savvy era, the most effective thing is to have actual conversations with those people! And a greatly under-used way to do that, is to call them on the phone. Obviously, it’s not always possible. But when it is, we’ve noticed that very successful fundraisers often call their supporters.

Many people know this in theory but talk themselves out of doing it! 

Bright Spot trainers Ben Swart and Rob Woods share some practical things you can do to overcome your (understandable) concerns. And they share examples to boost your confidence so you can connect with your charities’ donors and partners.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

How do you beat tough odds in fundraising? For many fundraisers, the odds are now tougher than ever. Whether it's because your cause is less popular, or your charity is small or less well-known… There are many reasons you may feel like an underdog.

Interestingly, some charities do secure valuable gifts, partnerships and grants, in spite of big disadvantages. Clearly this fact does not make life fair or make fundraising easy.  But it means that if we seek them, we can find valuable insights.

Having studied dozens of examples, in this episode Rob reveals two strategies that successful ‘underdog charities’ use when they succeed against difficult odds. In discussion with fellow Bright Spot trainer Ben Swart, he uses examples to show how these techniques can help you slay your own fundraising dragons.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you for supporting our show by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. You can find us both on LinkedIn.

The power of your reason why can be immense.

Charities often focus too much attention on how they help. They act and speak as though what they do is the most important and interesting thing. 

When you clarify and reconnect to the reason why your charity exists, it can be a fabulous catalyst for growth. You get new creativity and energy. When the South African non-profit Feenix did this in 2017, it unlocked a period of extraordinary growth. During the next five years up to 2022, fundraising income grew by 630%! Their impact was transformed.

Cara Jean Peterson, CEO of Feenix, joins Rob on the podcast to tell the rollercoaster story of how they did it. She shares insights from this exciting journey. And she offers tips to help other charities that are determined to grow their impact.

We’d love to know what you think about these ideas! Thank you for sharing our podcast, so it can help as many good causes as possible. Cara Jean and Rob are both on LinkedIn.