New model for the community fundraising ‘comeback kid’
Howard Lake | 8 July 2014 | News
A new model for community fundraising is being presented at the Institute of Fundraising National Convention today.
Lianne Howard-Dace
Delivering the session Community Fundraising: Problem child or rising star? Lianne Howard-Dace will outline a new model based on five ‘pillars’.
Each pillar embraces findings from a research dissertation by Lianne Howard-Dace – who is community and events fundraising manager at Royal London Society for the Blind – which she has recently submitted for her Masters degree at London South Bank University.
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[quote align=”centre” color=”#999999″]’Community fundraising is a bit of comeback kid, an eclectic eccentric who, despite being written off by many, reinvents itself and continues to have kooky moments and moments of sheer genius'[/quote]
“The model I’ve developed takes the key commonalities and themes which emerged from the research and synthesises them in to actionable areas for improvement,” Howard-Dace told UK Fundraising.
“Obviously everyone will be at different points in their development so I will be suggesting people identify which of these will be short, medium and long term goals for them to look at.”
Five ‘pillar’ model
The five pillars – which characterize successful community fundraising initiatives in the organsiations she studied – are:
* Strong staff
* Empowered volunteers
* Pro-active planning
* Collaborative working
* Insight-led decisions
Each pillar contains recommendations for planning community fundraising initiatives. Under ‘strong staff’, Howard-Dace recommends developing digital skills and delegating decision making. Under ‘collaborative working’, she recommends cross-selling projects and “challenging internal perceptions” about community fundraising.
Howard-Dace also presents a template stewardship plan that can be adapted for any community fundraising project, and checklists for volunteer resources.
The title of Howard-Dace’s research and IoF presentation refers to the Boston Matrix management tool. She concludes that community fundraising has undergone a resurgence during the recession making it a ‘rising star’ once again and in some cases even a ‘cash cow’.
Howard-Dace says: “Community fundraising is a bit of comeback kid, an eclectic eccentric who, despite being written off by many, reinvents itself and continues to have kooky moments and moments of sheer genius”.
The five-pillar community fundraising model can be downloaded here.
Image: five pillars by Morphart Creation on Shutterstock.com
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.