Survey exposes strong desire to harness creativity among UK fundraisers
Howard Lake | 28 October 2011 | News
90% of charity fundraisers want to harness creativity to overcome the challenges of the recession
LONDON, 3 October 2011 – A new survey released today has shown that fundraisers across the UK want to harness their innate creativity to raise funds for their charities. The survey carried out by LIFE Fundraising found that out of 265 fundraisers, 90% believed that their capacity to generate insights, solutions and ideas to raise money in these straitened economic times were not being harnessed effectively.
The survey also revealed that 71% of UK charity fundraisers believe that injecting even a little creative thinking into their daily work would reap massive rewards.
Jensen Calleemootoo, Founder of LIFE Fundraising, said: “We have an industry full of fundraisers who possess valuable tacit knowledge and a passion for creativity but sadly charities aren’t harnessing these assets well enough”.
97% of respondents did mention using ‘brainstorming’ as a technique to generate ideas but the majority felt that they were generating ‘better-sameness’ ideas from this technique. A term used to mean generating ideas that had been done before but slightly better. 2% said they used the internet for finding ideas.
Jensen Calleemootoo said: “Charities whose funding mixes rely heavily on sources of income from individuals need to constantly inspire their donors to keep them giving for longer. With disposable incomes expected to fall even further, generating valuable insights, solutions and ideas that create greater supporter loyalty can mean the difference between charitable activities collapsing or remaining afloat”.
Jensen also said: “We need to start creating conducive environments for fundraisers to come up with feasible and viable solutions. Fundraising leaders need to shift their paradigm. This needs to happen now to build on the valuable insights about supporters that remain hidden in the minds of their workforce in order to sustain and grow income levels”.
A full copy of the results are available, please contact Jensen Calleemootoo by telephone on 07775 652 728 or email je****@li*************.com
www.lifefundraising.com
Notes to editor
LIFE Fundraising
LIFE Fundraising is the UK’s first creative training service dedicated to assisting fundraising leaders to develop their team’s creative potential. We train fundraising teams to use creative thinking techniques through a problem solving process on fundraising challenges that are facing
them.
Founded in July 2011 LIFE Fundraising believes there is a wealth of tacit knowledge in charity fundraising teams which if harnessed could help them to find innovative ways out of the challenges caused by the economic recession.
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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.