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Careerbank folders distributed to Institute of Fundraising members
Howard Lake | 6 October 2004 | News
Institute of Fundraising individual members should now have received their personal copy of a Careerbank folder, the Institute’s new professional development tool.
The Institute of Fundraising launched Careerbank in July at its annual convention, describing it as “a tool designed to help fundraisers plan and record their professional development.”
The Careerbank A5 plastic folder contains
information which can help fundraisers identify, plan and reflect upon their career aspirations.
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At its heart is the Fundraising Career pathway, a standard format against which fundraisers can map their skills. The folder can be used to build up a “Personal Development Record”, by recording details of training courses undertaken, committee work, books read, and on the job learning, and plans of action arising from them. Careerbank therefore should become for fundraisers, as the Institute puts it, “the handbook to their career”.
The Institute clearly has high hopes for the tool: “Careerbank is a state of mind, an attitude and a culture”, it claims, rather grandly.
The ring-binder approach however seems a little dated. Wouldn’t a Web-based tool be more effective, and perhaps even less expensive? It could act as a professional development calendar for fundraisers, sending out reminder alerts about upcoming courses, and could allow the Institute to track to what extent and in what ways the tool was being used.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.