A showcase of extraordinary fundraising
Howard Lake | 20 November 2013 | Blogs
T minus 20 days and counting…
With just three weeks to go until the ‘Transformational’ Annual Lectures (that’s what the T stands for), you can imagine the team is excited, expectant, but also nervous of what this new event will really be like. Why do we want to do this?
Well, over a year ago, Clayton Burnett decided to commission a report from Professors Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang to look at ‘What makes fundraising truly great?’. The findings of this report highlighted some known and some fresh thinking on the magic ingredients of extraordinary fundraising. Having shared the report freely (yes, it still available free at www.claytonburnett.com), it became obvious by demand, that people wanted an opportunity to hear more and discuss very recent examples of great fundraising in practice. The Annual Lectures were born.
We went on the hunt for a special venue, a place that has drawn a crowd before and was known as a location for new discoveries and demonstrations that changed opinions and bred new ideas. The Royal Institution in London had it all. The Faraday theatre is a special place where scientific history has been made and it remains a renowned venue that I can remember watching as a young boy on BBC TV ‘Christmas Lectures’, as brilliant demonstrations showed me how things worked and why. A confession follows. I know I am no longer the target audience, but I have to admit I still watch every Christmas. You’re never too old, blah, blah.
So we had the reason and the place, we just needed the people. We are proud to have assembled an impressive group of over 20 speakers (visit the website to see the rare and rather humbling list of presenters), who will describe and demonstrate what they believe makes fundraising truly great. Their lessons from 2013 will be shared and include new approaches to donor retention, innovation and leadership, plus fresh takes on motivation, managing change, tactics, new media, storytelling and many more. Key to the event is the need for emotional inspiration and bags of it. You wouldn’t expect anything else from a Clayton Burnett event.
The good news is that we are aiming to give everybody in the theatre that day an aspirational view of what they can achieve in 2014 and The key learning points from the Great Fundraising report will reflect across all the presentations, with each speaker also providing insight into how they can demonstrate why the report rings true.
So, the stage is set for an amazing day at the Royal Institution on Thursday 5 December. We have speakers and attendees coming from an international arena and we are entering the final phase of promotion of the event and confirming the last few tickets sales. We are really excited and rightly nervous of making the first Clayton Burnett Annual Lectures, a truly ‘Transformational’ event. The countdown is on.
Find out more about this showcase of extraordinary fundraising.
Andy Whyte is MD of Clayton Burnett. UK Fundraising is a media partner for the Annual Lectures.
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.