Biggest and best International Fundraising Congress?
Howard Lake | 22 October 2006 | News
The Resource Alliance has just held its 26th annual conference – the International Fundraising Congress – in the Netherlands with its biggest ever audience.
Nine hundred and twelve delegates attended from more than 50 countries – just over 100 from the UK, but others from as far apart as Argentina, The Philippines, Ghana, Poland and Australia – to go to more than 100 different sessions with 50 different speakers over the course of three days.
The opening plenary was by Kavita Ramdas of the Global Fund for Women with her inspiring story of raising $20m.
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Among the new features this year was a series of five Big Issues sessions, put together by Tony Elischer. These presentations were linked with the themes of Inspiration, Connection, Speed, Reinvention and Attitude.
Each gave four of the best speakers and practitioners from around the world to speak for 10 minutes on their chosen topic within the theme of the session. For example, at the Reinvention session, Tim Hunter of the NSPCC chose to reinvent face-to-face and telephone fundraising, and Richard Radcliffe of Smee and Ford wanted to reinvent legacy marketing. The message was very much ‘we need to think about how to reinvent fundraising to make sure it survives into the future’.
But as well as the speakers, delegates were given the chance to air their views and ask questions of the panel at each of the sessions, making them fully interactive.
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.