Why are ex-creatives so good at fundraising?
Howard Lake | 29 January 2016 | Blogs
“I started street fundraising in my early 20s and I am now 39 and I can honestly say that street fundraising was my training ground in terms of becoming a human being with empathy, morality, inspiration and an intent to do good in this world.”
The Streets Ahead report, commissioned by Flow Caritas, pinpoints a variety of inspirational stories such as this throughout 23 pages of industry analysis, comments and statistics. Perhaps the most surprising results come from the fact that fundraisers who had previously worked or pursued a career in a creative industry excelled as fundraisers.
The report, which aimed to prove a direct correlation between people who start in street fundraising and use it as an entry point into charity fundraising, found that the standouts in this regard were creative types who began as street fundraisers while in-between jobs in music or performing arts.
Not only have these fundraisers risen high in the charity sector, but they only comprised 13.4 per cent of those surveyed. Perhaps key to this was the fact that they spent more time working in street fundraising before moving into a wider role – on average four years and five months compared to the three years and four months of others surveyed.
As the infographic below shows, the performing arts loss has definitely been the fundraisers gain.
Austen Ham-Howes has 10 years financial experience and is currently the operations and finance director for Flow Caritas.
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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.