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UK Fundraising is 12 years old today
Howard Lake | 30 November 2006 | News
UK Fundraising is celebrating its 12th anniversary today. That’s 12 years of publishing free news and information for fundraisers online.
Long-time readers and users of the site will know that we like to celebrate the site’s birthday by giving something away to readers. This year is a little different as we’re running our latest Perfect Pitch event today in London, covering information and communications technology.
The event, like other Perfect Pitch events, is free to attend, so that will have to be this year’s freebie. If you missed the event, then feel free to sign up to the next one on 21 February 2007 on direct/email marketing and donor retention/management.
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We’ve been busy over the past year: we’ve added new services including guest columnists in the form of blogs, offered downloadable resources to buy, begun a section of expert advice, instituted the DIY news release service we call the newswire, and we’ve also revived the book review email list, now used by over 4,000 people.
We’ve partnered with organisations such as the Institute of Fundraising, Charities Aid Foundation, Action Planning, and Haymarket as their online media partner for a wide variety of events.
We’ve also run more of our own free and popular Perfect Pitch events in London covering Gift Aid, funding, innovative fundraising, and donor retention and management.
For the early years of UK Fundraising’s existence, it was a one-person operation. Nowadays, however, there is a growing team of people involved in the development and updating of the site. So, it’s about time you were introduced to them:
* Penny Stephens contributes news items to UK Fundraising. (At last, some of you might say – a proper journalist writing on UK Fundraising).
* Paul Artherton writes the news items for the Ireland fundraising section, covering Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
* Paul Gardner at WebbedIT created and develops the content management system that the site runs on. He also seems to be permanently available to sort out any technical problem that crops up on the site.
* Craig Methven, Derek Wheeler and Rachel Cutler at Blunt Arts ensure job vacancy and supplier directory adverts are published rapidly. They’ve also helped with the technology behind the blogs, and have helped restore sections of archived news that didn’t quite make it from the last version of the site to the new one.
* Our network of bloggers now consists of Sarah Hughes, Ian MacQuillin, Lewis Honney, and Kevin Kibble. And we’ve got quite a few more bloggers lined up whom we’ll announce in the new year.
* Of course, the site would not get far without the excellent work of Lindsey Hood and her colleagues at Advertisingsales.co.uk who help ensure that this site stays free to access and yet makes a decent profit. Let’s see if Lindsey makes it into next year’s list of the most influential people in fundraising…
The site receives many helpful tips and useful support from many people and organisations but two people who have been particularly helpful this year are Sarah Hughes at Charity21 and Jenny Turner at Turner PR.
So, as you’ll see, while the site still runs on one full-time staff member, there is a valuable network of people contributing to its daily services.
But the site’s success and longevity is also down to its many users, and advertisers, who freely contribute tips, advice, news ideas, and other content – so thank you!
One other achievement that we’re pleased about: we’re once again back in first place for searches for “fundraising” on Google.com. (We’ve never yet dropped from first position for that search on Google.co.uk).
And of course we’re still proud that we’ve built and run this site without any of the voluntary sector infrastructure money that is now available to charities and other organisations. Although we do occasionally wonder what more we might have achieved with a couple of doses of £150,000 or thereabouts…
We’re still excited about future plans to improve and develop the site. Without giving too much away, expect more opportunities to contribute your thoughts and expertise; navigate your way round the site; and find and keep up to date with only the sections and issues that interest you.
Do you have any ideas or suggestions for the site? Let us know, and we’ll see if the site can accommodate them as it gets close to its teenage years…
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.