Most interactive seminar at National Convention 2008?
Howard Lake | 11 July 2008 | Blogs
The late afternoon slot at a conference is always a tricky one, but that is when some legacy fundraising experts managed to pull off, in my view, the most engaging, useful and enjoyable session at this week’s National Fundraising Convention in London.
“Roll up! Roll up to the Legacy Marketplace – Find out about your legacy future” was presented by Paul Farthing (High Value Relationships Director at Cancer Research UK), Graham Richards, freelance fundraiser, and Stephen George, Development Director Legacies at NSPCC (who blogs on UK Fundraising).
Walking into the room we found all chairs had been cleared away, and we had to gather into a circle. Then the three presenters got to speak for a short time on their soap boxes (OK, chairs) to convince us of their vision of the future of legacy fundraising. Would legacies all be made, stored and updated online? Would legacy marketing disappear as a discipline? Was local the future? Should we bring back titheing, or stop asking for pledges? Shouldn’t we acknowledge that charities would always come second to families in a donor’s priorities?
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We were each given a colourful plastic ball and encouraged to throw it at the speaker if we disagreed with them. The audience didn’t hold back!
Right at the end we all had to re-enact 70’s ITV children’s programme Runaround and run to stand in front of the speaker whose vision we most agreed with.
It was all great fun and covered a good deal of ground in a short time. Balls were thrown and we even had a dissenting, or more accurately, synthesising view from legacy fundraisers Carol Johns at RNID and Richard Popper RNLI.
In many ways this bore the hallmarks of an unconference, a very funky development for the Institute of Fundraising annual convention.
So, here are some snapshots of the seminar as it progressed to give you a sense of what we enjoyed. (Apologies to Paul Farthing whose compelling performance I didn’t manage to capture).
Stephen George #1
Stephen George #2
Graham Richards #1
Graham Richards #2
Graham Richards #3
Carol Johns RNID and Richard Popper RNLI #1
Carol Johns RNID and Richard Popper RNLI #2
And the winning speaker was – Stephen George.
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.