Managing Up: The Internal Conversations That Can Make-or-Break Trust Fundraising
Trust fundraisers are brilliant at navigating external barriers. The internal ones, the conversations about impact data, targets and telling beneficiary stories, get far less attention. Stacey Teece explores the internal conversations that decide whether trust fundraising thrives or struggles.
The Questions Trust Fundraisers Are Really Asking
After nearly two years of Let's Chat sessions, training and client work, Stacey Teece keeps hearing the same questions from trust fundraisers. Here she answers the most common ones honestly and practically, from executive summaries and application length to how much to ask for and making the case for core costs. No judgement, no silly questions.
Summer Isn't Slow Season, It's Strategy Season: A Major Donor Fundraiser's Guide
Summer is often called the quiet season in major donor fundraising. Hannah Shepherd makes the case that it is one of the richest windows in the calendar, and shares five practical ways to use it, from engagement calendars and due diligence to solicitation planning.
The 7 Steps of Major Donor Fundraising: What Goes Wrong and How to Fix It
The 7 steps of major donor fundraising are widely known — but following them does not guarantee success. Beth Upton argues that charities struggle not because they misunderstand the steps, but because they have not put the organisational foundations in place first. Here is what to address before you start the sequence.
Your Trust Pipeline Is Trying to Tell You Something — Are You Listening?
Your trust pipeline is more than a tracker of money in and money out. Stacey Teece explains how to read it as a map of your funder relationships — and what to do when it reveals that something needs to change.
Good news on Trust funding — but is it the whole story?
Positive headlines about trust funding growth are welcome — but they can mask very different realities for individual fundraisers. Stacey Teece looks at what the data actually means for your cause area, and why digging deeper into the numbers matters.
Project Design for Trust Fundraising: What Makes a Fundable Project
As trust fundraisers, we rarely have control over the design or delivery of the projects/services for which we are raising necessary income. Nevertheless, we still need to gather as much information as we can to complete our proposals and applications so they make sense and are an inviting opportunity for funders in which to invest.
Does your Case for Support pass the Why? test?
It used to be the natural thing for us to question everything – we asked why? all the time. Over time we’ve stopped doing that so much – we know more, we don’t ask as much. Asking “yeah, but why?” about your fundraising proposition is a good test of whether you’ve arrived at the nub of the issue yet… and if you can’t answer the whys that you come up with you won’t be answering the whys of your audience.
Achieving balance: foundations of fundraising resilience
Regardless of your fundraising specialty, here are some tips from Money Tree Fundraising to help build, or rebuild, your fundraising resilience.
