UK Fundraising is 10 years old today
Howard Lake | 30 November 2004 | News
UK Fundraising was first published on 30 November 1994 as a single Web page.
UK Fundraising is celebrating its tenth anniversary today. For ten years we have
lead the way in using the Internet to share fundraising expertise to improve the effectiveness of fundraisers. We’ve served fundraisers at thousands of charities and voluntary organisations throughout the UK and in many other countries around the world.
The site was set up to demonstrate by example the importance and value of the Internet to charity fundraisers. We have banged on about the importance of Internet fundraising (ie. using the Internet to help *all* aspects of fundraising, *not* just online donations, important as they are), and after ten years we can take some comfort that the message is now embedded in many UK charities. There’s room for improvement of course, and we’ll keep suggesting these, but we’ll take some credit in urging fundraisers to explore and test the remarkable potential of the Internet.
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Indulge us while we list our achievements and thoughts on reaching ten.
Our achievements
- the first Web resource in the world dedicated to professional charity/non-profit fundraisers
- one of the first 3,000 Web sites in the world (source: .net magazine)
- published at no charge for 10 years
- the site has been profit-making since 1996.
- our free fortnightly e-mail newsletter is sent to 9,400+ subscribers, more than twice the number of members of the Institute of Fundraising
- we’ve never asked for or taken a penny in
grants or funding, unlike some other charity umbrella Web sites that have received £150,000 to create Web sites (some of them twice!). So we have not cost the charity sector a penny. - still financially independent and wholly privately owned by its founder.
- editorially independent.
- passionately collaborative: we welcome good content from any source. From the outset we published details of other providers we thought important for fundraisers but who at that point didn’t have a Web site e.g. CAF, Directory of Social Change (we published their whole book catalogue online in 1995), Institute of Fundraising, Professional Fundraising magazine, Smee and Ford, and others.
- our content is king: we’re not a thinly-disguised shop-window for our or someone else’s consultancy services. Don’t believe us? Try searching the site now for details of our consultancy services: they are far from prominent.
- much of our content is unique: while we feature some key stories covered by other fundraising and charity sector publications, you’ll read plenty of information on our site that just isn’t available elsewhere.
- our content is used by fundraisers of all kinds, from senior managers at UN organisations to volunteer fundraisers at a village hall
- we’ve *never* won an award for our site: by the time organisations set up awards recognising online innovation in the charity sector, our site was well and truly part of the furniture.
- we’ve only ever published online: we still don’t have colour printed letterhead.
- we’ve never paid a penny to advertise or promote our site.
- we’ve generated considerable amounts of business for fundraising suppliers and agencies: one told us that a third of all his referrals came from UK Fundraising.
- consistently top (or more recently top two or three) of searches for “fundraising” on search engines throughout the ages e.g. Webcrawler, Lycos, AltaVista, Excite, Google.
- we’ve inspired people to found new careers in new media fundraising
- and we know we’ve helped fundraisers locate considerable sums in grants
We’ve notched up so many firsts – here are some of them:
- first (and only?) company in this sector to make a long-term profitable business out of publishing news and information at no charge. We make money by giving lots of our expertise away.
- first e-mail discussion forum for charity fundraisers in the UK (now the Web-based UK Fundraising Forum) (April 1996)
- first charity sector Web site to earn income from banner ads (1996)
- first daily news service for UK fundraisers (1997)
- first daily e-mail alert service for UK fundraisers (2001)
- first to pass on savings of online publishing by offering low-cost recruitment adverts to fundraisers (1995)
- first service to carry e-mail and Web-based recruitment adverts for fundraisers (1996)
- first charity sector site to test income generation possibilities of affiliate marketing e.g. Amazon associate since 1997.
In many ways we believe we’ve led by example. We’ve shown charities, either explicitly or implicitly, how they can create, publish and develop a Web presence that can generate income, reduce their costs, build their brand, and help achieve their charitable objectives. We’ve shown how it can be done from a standing start and with no promotional budget in 10 years.
We also believe our environmental footprint has been small: no company car, all business travel by public transport (and trains rather than planes where possible), and very limited use of paper.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to this site over 10 years. You’ve proved that enlightened collaboration using new technology can help build an even more effective fundraising profession. Ten years ago such a concept was far from the commonplace it is now.
Thank you too to everyone who has paid to advertise their services or job vacancies here over the years.
It’s almost invidious to thank individuals given so many people have given so much to this site, but special thanks must go to Andrew Thomas of Charity Consultants Ltd, James Redhead of Redhead Consulting, and Sarah Hughes of Charities Aid Foundation for their early and consistent support and interest.
We’ve truly enjoyed the last 10 years. We’ve met with frustration of course: our first NatWest bank manager told us in 1996 that “no-one can make money on the Internet”. The charity sector as a whole was desperately slow to embrace the potential of the Internet. But that simply confirmed the value and importance of a site like UK Fundraising and its message.
One final confession: this site is the work of just one person, its founder and sole salaried employee, Howard Lake. We now use the services of excellent Web designers and developers, advertising sales people, and other professionals, but the site, its promotion, its content, its customer service, its e-mail newsletter publication, is all handled by one person. We hope that inspires you when you hear that your charity can’t afford to update its Web site or accept online donations, or some other seemingly insurmountable problem.
We hope you’ve found our 10 years of service useful and inspiring. We’ll put aside our laurels tomorrow morning, so keep sharing news of your success and failures, ideas, achievements and aims, and we’ll keep using the Internet to spread this best practice to make our fundraising even more effective.
Coming soon: our birthday offer – win a free job advert or banner advert on UK Fundraising.
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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.