THINK PIECES
How do cultural organisations raise money?
Six top tips for building fundraising capacity… READ MORE
The Business of Boards
Since BOP and I started evaluating the Catalyst programme in 2013, we’ve worked with more than 500 arts organisations across the country… READ MORE
Small Answers to the Big Funding Questions
Achates Philanthropy Prize 2018… READ MORE
Philanthropy Landscape
Arts Council England podcasts on fundraising… LISTEN
Arts Council England Catalyst Evaluation Reports
Are You Suffering from Lone Fundraiser Syndrome?
Fundraisers can inhabit a cold and lonely world at the best of times and that experience can be thrown into even sharper focus when they find themselves in a position of being the sole person within an organisation 'responsible' for fundraising… READ MORE
Artist Care (or it isn't personal)
When you work in a cultural organisation, one of the greatest assets is that you have access to artists who will support your work. But knowing how to work with them, and get the best out of them, can be difficult… READ MORE
The Art of Strategic Organisation
The Challenges of Early Phase Capital Campaign Management
Although I could write a dozen articles on the joys and challenges of capital campaign management, as well as a book on the pitfalls of the different stages of a campaign, this article focuses on the elements I feel are key to establishing the tools and practises at the start of a successful campaign… READ MORE
Taking Advantage of Changing Trends in Philanthropic Giving
In the present and the future, identifying individual prospects to fund cultural projects and tailoring subsequent recognition will require a great deal of innovation… READ MORE
Alternative Finance Models: A Digest
When I embarked on a career in arts management, questions of finance were quite far from my mind. After all, I wanted to work in the arts, not in banking. I didn't imagine then that such questions would ever become important, let alone interesting… READ MORE
Grants for the Arts 101
A practical, beginners' guide to applying for Arts Council funding for the first time
I'm frequently approached by artists and emerging companies seeking help with their first Arts Council England 'Grants for the Arts' application and, although I'm happy to help, I often find myself asking the same questions and receiving the same answers… READ MORE
Getting Your Board on Board
Part Two: Give and Get
When was the last time a member of your Board of Trustees enthusiastically offered to help with the fundraising of the organisation? When did they ask to review a leaflet before it went to print, let alone take an active role in an ask meeting? READ MORE
Getting Your Board on Board
Part One: Towards a New Definition of Charity
When you read the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of 'charity' it's not hard to understand why few in the UK perceive the arts in such a way. It's the concept of 'need' which I would suggest is a particular barrier… READ MORE
A Beginner's Guide to Statutory Fundraising
My career in fundraising started by a rather circuitous route. I'd been planning to open a cultural centre in Sheffield at a time when The Crucible was a lone beacon of the arts in the city… READ MORE
Event Management (or how not to panic)
My professional background is in running events with authors in bookshops, although over the past 20 plus years I've ended up running a wide variety of events in extremely varied locations including a significant number with a fundraising goal… READ MORE
Panacea or Pain?
A User's Guide to Development Councils
In the United States, Development Councils are omnipresent – the model underlying all successful fundraising campaigns. While most American fundraising practise has now found its translatable equivalent in the UK, Development Councils haven't reached the same degree of ubiquitous application as many of the other principles of philanthropy we've adopted… READ MORE
A Guide to Trust Fundraising
Part Three: Into the Spotlight
In the third instalment of this three-part guide to trust fundraising, we will explore the actual application process, the chance for the organisation to finally step into the spotlight and showcase it's work on the page… READ MORE
A Guide to Trust Fundraising
Part Two: Reaching the Audience
In Part One of this three-part guide we went behind the scenes to prepare for the performance… Now, with the show ready to go on, we can consider how best to reach and engage the prospective audience? READ MORE
A Guide to Trust Fundraising
Part One: The Deep Blue Sea
Trust fundraising is often the area in which charities take their first tentative steps; tiptoeing into the shallows of what they fear may be the shark-infested waters of fundraising… READ MORE
Ethicality
As the Guardian campaigns for The Wellcome Trust and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to withdraw investments from oil revenues… it seems that philanthropists and cultural institutions are coming under greater scrutiny than ever before… READ MORE
The Philosophy of Major Gifts
The £10,000,000 donation from the Dorfman Family to the National Theatre is one of a number of major gifts associated with capital campaigns in recent years, which provide a useful framework for thinking about how to achieve success in major gift fundraising… READ MORE
The Need for Fundraising Feasibility Studies
The early stages of a new capital project are phenomenally exciting for any arts organisation – the prospect of being able to develop the scale and technical quality of your artistic programme, to improve your audience's experience and deepen your engagement with them, to increase earning potential, all this makes the scoping process so inspiring… READ MORE
Schemes for Living and Giving
One of my specialisms as a fundraising consultant is capital campaigns. As far as I'm aware, I've now actively worked on more cultural capital projects than anyone else in the UK. However, no matter how many projects I work on… READ MORE
The Crisis of Capital
In the UK we still tend to think of charities as benevolent organisations. So considering cultural organisations as charitable institutions, deserving of public support, is still a leap for much of the general public.… READ MORE
Heroes of Philanthropy
Like many people, it was with mixed emotions that I read that Tony Blair had won GQ's Philanthropist of the Year award. I'm sure that no one reading this needs a disquisition from me on my personal views for or against Tony, or his politics… READ MORE
The Everyman Philanthropist
By most people’s standards I’m a terrible businesswoman. I’ve just taken on a project that will take one day a week of my time and will definitely lose me money. What’s more, I gave more than £50,000 to charity last year and won’t be getting a penny of tax rebate on the gifts I made… READ MORE
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