Sir Richard Branson says companies have a responsibility to better support their nominated charities.
Howard Lake | 8 January 2010 | News
Sir Richard Branson says companies have a responsibility to better support their nominated charities.
Sir Richard Branson says, on the subject of CSR, that, it’s up to charities to try to convert those companies that are just ‘doing it for the sake of their image’ to doing it ‘for real’.
KnowHow NonProfit, in partnership with third sector fundraising and strategy consultants, Action Planning, has released a series of podcast interviews with the wealthy philanthropists who addressed Action Planning’s recent ‘Raising Funds from the Rich’ conference. These give non-profit fundraisers invaluable insights into the motivations of wealthy donors.
They include:
* Sir Richard Branson discussing how corporate donors can make a real difference to a charity by funding core overheads
* Martin Brookes explaining how charities can communicate the impact of the work they do to attract and retain major donors
* Martha Lane Fox talking about using e-communications to attract major donors
* Robin Thomas talking about organisational engagement with potential major donors, what motivates them to give, and developing strategies to make them feel involved.
* Kerry Rock on how to find ‘the hidden millionaires’
* Ram Gidoomal exploring the importance of having cross-cultural awareness when engaging rich people in the BME and Asian community.
* Johan Elishah talking about ‘active philanthropy’ and attracting partners who are passionate about the cause.
Major donor fundraising has proved to be one of the fastest growing sources of income for charities, and has proved to be particularly resilient during the recession. These talks should give charities an insight into how to build a successful major donor campaign.
Visit http://www.knowhownonprofit.org/raisingfunds and download podcasts for free.
Backround notes:
About KnowHow NonProfit:
KnowHow Nonprofit is a free information resource and an online community; a place where new charity start-ups and experienced professionals can come together online and share their knowledge and expertise.
www.knowhownonprofit.org is packed full of useful information, podcasts from events, and a calendar of courses and conferences stretching across the UK. We also have our own fortnightly Millcaster Tales, where fictional nonprofits experience real life challenges.
About Action Planning:
Action Planning is a leading fundraising, management and recruitment consultancy to charities and the not-for-profit sector, helping hundreds of organisations to raise capital and revenue funding, recruit key people and plan ahead.
Action Planning also runs an extensive programme of conferences and training including the annual Fundraising from the Rich conference, which is the largest one-day conference in the UK not-for-profit sector. Delegates at this year’s conference received insights from major donors, advice from fundraising specialists on the Action Planning team and views on charitable giving. For more information please visit:
www.actionplanning.co.uk/rich2009
Sahara Quli: You were talking about funding central overheads when you talked to us and that Virgin Unite looked at funding central overheads of non profit organisations and that really does resonate with yes we really want to help this charitable organisation.
Sir Richard Branson: I think there are corporates who genuinely want to help and there are corporates who just want the image of helping. And I think it’s up to charities to try to convert those corporates that are just doing it for images sake into doing it for real. Whether it’s embarrassing them somewhat, I don’t think they have to be public about it, but I think they just need to get them to realise that if they play their part in the real world apart from just being a money making machine, that if they really make a difference to people’s lives, their own staff will feel proud of working for them, they’ll work that much harder as a result and they will be doing what is basically right. So I’m sure that a good charity worker can tell which corporates are for real and which are not and if they’re not for real at least you’ve got them hooked. You have to lure in the fish and make sure that they really do deliver for you.
Sahara Quli: How do you assess the impact of a non profit organisation? What resonates with you and how do you assess the impact of the work we do?
Sir Richard Branson: I think that we treat non-profits very similarly to treating any one of our businesses. So, because there is a limited amount of money to go round, we want to make sure that that money is well spent and not wasted. And that, in a sense, that we get a really good return on that money. So in a sense, turning the tables on the non profits, we want them to deliver in the same way that we would expect any of our companies to deliver. And if they’ve got a sum of money from Virgin, we want to make sure that if it’s say a Fistula campaign that the maximum amount of young girls get operated on, that the maximum amount of doctors are trained to do Fistula operations and then perform them. We don’t want it to go down some pot, somewhere in Nigeria and find that no operations have taken place, no doctors have been trained and that our money has been wasted.
Sahara Quli: Sir Richard Branson thank you so much for your time, the sector is going to better off for hearing your insights.
Sir Richard Branson: Thanks so much.
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.