®Your fundraising isn’t broken. Your system is.
Anyone can ask for money. Raising more every year, and getting a real return on what you invest in fundraising, takes a system. We help charity leaders see that system, score it and fix it.
Profit for purpose. Not faceless shareholders.
Fundraising profit is the money left for the cause once the cost of raising it is paid. It buys vaccines, shelter, food and education. It pays for care for the sick and the dying. Nobody takes it out. It all goes back in.
We have spent twenty years with academics, charities and donors working out what makes fundraising pay, and what only looks like it does. The answer is The Effective Fundraising System™, a blueprint for growth that lasts.
The hardest thing a charity leader can do is deliver impact that lasts.
Growing fundraising takes courage. Courage to accept where you are now, to want to change, and then to actually change.
More return means more money for the cause. More money means more impact. More impact brings more donors, and more donors bring more gifts. That is the purpose flywheel.
The shift needs every leader behind it. So we work with whole leadership teams to:
- build a shared understanding of where you are now and where your purpose says you should be
- get clear on what the road there needs, and how you will travel it
- keep the focus and resilience to finish the job, knowing the change is the right one
How healthy is your fundraising system? Now there is a number for that.
The Audit scores your fundraising system across eight Forces and forty sub-dimensions, against the same rubric we use in our consulting work.
You see where the system is earning a return and where it is leaking value, in a form a board can act on. Start on your own with the Self Audit, bring your team in with Guided, or bring us in with Full.
Everything we do falls into four stages
They are a sequence, not a package. Most clients start with one and add the rest when they are ready.
- 01
Diagnose
An honest, evidenced read of your fundraising system and what it is costing you. A score you can take to a board.
- 02
Design
Decide what the system should look like: how income is built, who decides what, where capability goes and what stops.
- 03
Deliver
We stay in the room while the change meets real life. This is the stage most change skips, and the one that decides whether it holds.
- 04
Learn
Feedback loops that make the system smarter instead of repeating itself, so you do not need us again for the same problem.
Latest thinking
Most donor relationships dont end, they're starved.
How to tell whether your organisation has a stewardship rhythm or just good intentions
When forecasts become useful instead of theatrical
Every fundraising leader I know can tell me their forecast. Far fewer can tell me what it's for.
Organisational Transformation Is Hard. That’s Why Most of It Fails Quietly.
Most fundraising transformations don’t fail because of poor ideas. They stall because the system underneath never really changes.
A Donor Code of Conduct is not just a 'Nice to have'
This is one of those quiet changes with the potential to shape the future of our sector for the better.