UK Fundraising is 11 years old
Howard Lake | 30 November 2005 | News
UK Fundraising today celebrates its 11th anniversary of publishing online news, resources and practical information at no charge to a wide audience of fundraisers.
The website is the oldest web resource dedicated to charity fundraising staff. It has proudly published at no charge to its readership, yet made a profit within months of its launch. Indeed, that model is holding up well as we enter our 12th year: indeed, turnover this financial year is expected to double.
The past year has seen the site’s team of contributors grow, new services launch and the first of our ventures into offline activities, namely our Perfect Pitch events.
Indeed, in keeping with our tradition of giving away birthday presents on our birthday, we managed that a day early this year with yesterday’s Perfect Pitch – Gift Aid event in London. Over 100 delegates were treated, at no charge, to the latest practical information on how to make the most out of Gift Aid: organisations which presented included HM Revenue and Customs, Bmycharity, Blackbaud, CAF and GAIN. And at the end we treated them to free wine at a reception. Feedback at the event and that received subsequently suggests its content proved very useful to many of the delegates.
This past year has seen our network of associates grow. We now have a dedicated writer on fundraising in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a news reporter, a team of three people adding commercial advertising to the site, a team of two advertising sales staff, our two web development experts, and now two financial staff. Needless to say, most are not full-time, but then from our earliest days we’ve striven to run a lean organisation and exploit the benefits of a virtual organisation.
On top of that, during the year we have received enquiries from the UK and overseas about buying the site which demonstrates, in our mind, that others can see the value in the site, and perhaps have ideas of improving it further.
So, plenty for UK Fundraising to feel satisfied with as we look back, but the site would not succeed without the extensive, warm, and insightful support and contributions it receives from its readership and the wider fundraising community. We receive excellent industry news tips and intelligence from all kinds of people, and our discussion forum remains the most active by far in the fundraising sector in the UK.
So, thank you to all our readers and contributors for making and keeping UK Fundraising the successful resource and business that it is. If you think it needs to improve, tell us and we’ll see if we can act on your suggestions in the coming year.
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.