Sarah Hughes sets up as independent new media consultant
Howard Lake | 27 June 2005 | News
After nine years as Head of New Media at Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), Sarah Hughes has left to set up new media agency Charity21 which will provide consultancy to charities in giving, fundraising, and communications strategy and planning.
Sarah has 12 years experience of new media: during her time at CAF she was responsible for a wide range of key developments both for CAF and the charity sector. These include the UK’s first online corporate grantmaking tool (2000), the CAF Charity Account online (1998), CafCash’s e-banking service (2001), a workplace giving tool (2003), CAF’s credit card giving portal GiveNow (2002), and the efundraising.org charity fundraising portal (2002).
Since 2003 Sarah’s focus at CAF has been on its back office web integration, the consolidation of some its multiple sites and its e-communications and customer relationship management strategies.
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Whilst at CAF Sarah also developed new media partnerships with OneWorld, AlertNet (Reuter Foundation), United Nations Foundation, Do-it, AOL UK and AOL Time Warner.
As such she is one of the leading and most experienced practitioners in the UK in charities’ use of new media. She has given extensive voluntary support to the development and understanding of new media in the charity sector, and encouraged its effective adoption. She is Chair of the Institute of Fundraising’s Working Party for Electronic Fundraising Code, Chair of the Advisory Board of the Charity Technology Trust, New Media adviser to Operation Smile UK, and a member of the ePhilanthropy Foundation Education Committee.
Her current clients include Mission Fish, Christian Aid, Make A Wish Foundation and CAF. Fundraising UK Ltd, the company behind UK Fundraising, is one of her first consultancy partners. Sarah has played a valuable role in advising on the development of UK Fundraising over the years.
Sarah explained her move into consultancy to UK Fundraising: “CAF has afforded me quite an incredible wealth of experiences with new media, in the UK and overseas. I am so pleased to be taking this leap forwards to concentrate on helping a larger and more diverse range of charities achieve their New Media ambitions.
She believes that new media still has much to offer charities, but that specialist, effective new media consultancy for charities is relatively hard to come by. “I really do have a mantra now, ” she added, “which is that new media is here to modernize charity; their brand, their activities, and their fundraising.”
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.