Professionalising the Sector

Howard Lake | 6 February 2007 | Blogs

How many years have we all moaned about the lack of good people in the sector? How the length of time people stay in their fundraising jobs – especially the first one – gets shorter and shorter. And anyone who has been a fundraising director knows just how often keen fresh graduates come knocking on our doors asking for a job in fundraising, only to be told that they have no relevant experience.
At the annual Careers Circus that moves from university to university, where is the voluntary sector, offering careers in fundraising? What are we doing to create the truly professional cadre of fundraisers that the sector so desperately needs?
Surely the answer is staring us in the face? One or two charities already offer graduate training schemes for fundraisers, but in total these come to no more than a handful of places. What if the top 50 charities committed themselves to a minimum of one graduate traineeship a year and the Institute committed itself to promote the scheme around the universities? We’d have an injection of at least 50 bright young people into the sector each year, and almost overnight fundraising would be perceived as a profession to aspire to.
What could such a scheme look like? I would suggest a two year programme where graduates would be paid, say £18-20,000 per year by the host charity. Over the two years of the traineeship, they would spend time in each major fundraising area – individuals, corporates, trusts and community – and they would attend block release training in fundraising and management, run by the Institute. At the end of the two years, they would have membership of the Institute. They could then be offered a full-time job by their sponsoring charity or would be free to move elsewhere within the sector.
Ah, I hear you cry. So the charities take all the risk and then the bod leaves for pastures new. How can we justify the expense? Well, for starters, two years is better than you’re getting out of the average initial jobholder now. Secondly, if you plan properly, then you should be able to offer those graduates a decent job at the end of their training. After all, most fundraising departments have staff turnovers of at least 25% per year. Thirdly, you’re getting two years’ work out of them at a reasonably low salary.
So come on, let’s pull our collective fingers out and start really professionalising the sector. For a very small investment, we could see within five years anything up to 500 new fully qualified fundraisers in the sector. Now that really could start to make a difference.

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.