Being a strategic fundraiser (Part 1)

Members – £295+VAT         Non-members – £395+VAT   (150 CPD points)

Do you want to think more strategically about how your organisation raises money? Do you want to move from a more reactive model to one that takes an honest, whole-organisation view of your think tank’s fundraising, and use it to plan deliberately for the short, medium and long term?

Our new two-part training course builds on our Fundraising Fundamentals training and is designed for fundraisers with some experience under their belt – this session is for those are comfortable with the basics of the role and want to think more strategically about how their think tank raises money, and how they can personally hit their targets.

The course consists of two half-day training sessions. You do not need to attend both sessions but we would recommend attending both, if possible, to get the full benefit of the training. Part 2 builds directly on the exercises and work you develop in Part 1. Our trainer for this session is Jo Redhead, former Research Business Development Director at think tank RUSI and a person with a wealth of fundraising experience with some of the world’s most influential foundations.

Too much fundraising happens reactively – chasing any and all opportunities that come through the door rather than stepping back to ask what is the best cost-value opportunities to pursue and asking whether the organisation’s approach to how they fundraise is working as well as it could.

Part 1 of this two-part course is designed to help experienced fundraisers do exactly that: take an honest, whole-organisation view of your think tank’s fundraising, and use it to plan deliberately for the short, medium and long term.

Part 1 starts with a live SWOT – but the focus is your organisation’s fundraising as a whole, not any single project or funder. You’ll map out where your funding base is genuinely strong, where it’s exposed, and which challenges are structural rather than personal.

From there, you’ll separate what’s actually within your control from what isn’t, before turning that picture into a concrete plan across three time horizons: short-term needs, mid-term opportunities that will take resource to build, and the longer-range, pie-in-the-sky possibilities that you can keep working towards.

The day closes by translating that plan into an internal roadmap – which key stakeholders need to be onside and what your next steps might be to build support internally.

As with all Smart Thinking trainings we aim for you to leave the session with at least two techniques or suggestions that you can action at your desk the next day.

By the end of Part 1 you will have:

• A whole-organisation view of your think tank’s fundraising strengths, weaknesses and structural challenge
• An internal roadmap identifying key stakeholders and next steps to build support in-house
• A clear sense of what’s actually actionable versus what’s outside your control
• A short, medium and long-term plan for what opportunities you are going to target

Course outline:

Why being a strategic fundraiser matters

• Why a deliberate strategy matters

Live SWOT: your organisation’s funding health

• Fundraising SWOT case study
• Creating a live SWOT for your think tank’s overall fundraising

Inside vs outside control

• Segmenting your SWOT into what’s actually actionable

Building priorities for the short, medium and long term

•       Short-term, mid-term (needs resource) and pie-in-the-sky priorities for your organisation’s funding health
•       Budgeting your social capital and why you can’t pursue every opportunity

Internal roadmap

•       Mapping internal comms channels, forums and key stakeholders
•       Concrete next steps to build support internally and keep your funding plan on track

Wrap-up

More information on Part 2 can be found here.

Trainer:

Jo Redhead founded Big Picture Funding after three years as RUSI’s first Research Business Development Director, where she built and led a high-performing centralised BD team through major shifts in the funding landscape. This followed five years at the Center for Global Development, where Jo co-led a team across Washington D.C and London. Using a relationship-led approach to foundation fundraising, they delivered an annual funding target of $25m+.

Jo’s fundraising experience spans many of the world’s most influential foundations – including the Gates Foundation, Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy), the European Climate Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and CIFF – as well as successful bids to the UK and US governments, Global Affairs Canada, Sida, Norad, and GIZ. She has also worked to secure places in major European Commission and UKRI research consortia.

Register for a place*