Seeing Things A New
Imogen Ward
4th December 2023
I’ve recently returned from Australia, where AAW have been working with the University of Sydney (USYD).
USYD have some big plans and ideas for overall income generation, and they’ve sought our support with planning for their new comprehensive campaign following on from their hugely successful first campaign called INSPIRED which raised a stunning AU$1billion.
We were out in Australia primarily to help with the engagement phase. Engaging not just USYD’s internal key stakeholders such as the Vice Chancellor, Provost, Deans, Faculty Leads and other leadership, but also to bring the donor into the conversation at this crucial stage.
Australian philanthropy is pretty well advanced, particularly in the Higher Education space where it is raising a lot more than all UK counterparts other than Oxbridge. And it's catching up with those two lovable rascals fast. Very fast.
Okay… so we are talking big figures here and very, very significant gifts. Gulp! It was an enormous privilege for us to have that unique access to thoughts and insights first-hand from such major philanthropists.
Even now – nearly 30 years after I started my career in Fundraising – I find that I am constantly learning stuff. And that’s what keeps me fascinated and excited by philanthropy, particularly when you get insight from different countries and cultures.
So, what did I learn? Loads! But these five (maybe six) things keep swimming around my mind at the moment. Examples below or learnings aren’t related to just USYD or higher education institutions by the way. The below is what I have taken from the highly unique opportunity that I have had to speak with philanthropists within the setting of planning and wider internal engagement.
It really is about big impact for donors at this level and for them it’s about finding the best partners to do this with. Track record, scale, financial leverage are important but ultimately its whether they feel they can truly work with you productively. Charities and NFPs need to be confident that they can truly make this impact and have a clear idea about the road map. Clear, but not inflexible. Most donors want the opportunity to co-create. Most do not want to control or micromanage, but they do want to feel like this is a partnership.
With that in mind, donors are acutely aware that NFPs can have a problem with joined up working or formal or informal partnerships with other comparative organisations working the same space. Mostly they find this odd. We really need to do something about this. Higher education institutions are far more advanced in this journey than say international aid and development for example.
Organisations need to be joined up internally which, surely, is a much, much easier thing to achieve then let’s say brokering external partnerships? Surely? But no. When problems happen down the line – and of course they will when you are trying to do stuff at scale – it’s often because internally things have become disjointed. And this is something that we see time and time again. Making sure that everyone is on the same page is not just a nice to have once implantation is in full force, it’s as crucial as securing the gift itself.
Sustainability. If the project has a long tail or significant ongoing costs for the foreseeable, how will this be sustained in 10, 20 or even 30 years’ time? This brings in of course the question of diversity of funding sources and financial stability… it’s something that some donors can be anxious about. ‘What happens when I stop funding it….” There needs to be a plan, even if it’s got a long lens.
The next generation. Particularly when dealing with family funds and offices, having an eye to the future is important. Don’t assume that the next generation will dig you or your cause and if I am honest, I think everyone needs to cool about this. Can you mitigate it? Probably not. But just be nice. Make sure that you engage as much as possible across all ages so that you can keep visibility and crucially relevance. And who knows? Maybe….
And a bonus number 6.
Sometimes, organisations are nervous about having donors involved in planning or opening up access to lots of different people and views. I get it. Us fundraisers want to steward relationships perfectly, but it can sometimes be this obsession with perfection, with stage managing things to a ridiculous degree that stunts the journey. Donors are just people, right? They have often run huge businesses themselves. They had to deal with disputes and catastrophic issues. They know that life is complicated.
Of course, they want to be dealt with professionally and elegantly (and to point 2 – don’t be at war internally!) but CRUCIALLY they want the relationship to be authentic. And sometimes Dear Fundraiser that can mean easing off on the control freakery and just letting them in more. And taking that risk. The team at USYD taught me just that.
It says a lot about my own levels of self-awareness that it took a trip to the other side of the world to really learn this. But I get it now. I really do.