Tag Archives: fundraising

New FIA principles and standards of fundraising practice

Recently the Fundraising Institute of Australia (FIA) launched an important new Code of Practice, Principles and Standards of Fundraising Practice, which allows Third Sector organisations to check how they should be operating and allows donors to recognise complying organisations.   Ethical fundraising is crucial to public trust in Third Sector organisations.  The Code plays an important part in setting the framework for appropriate transparency, accountability and ethical practice.  The principles are critical to how the fundraising profession … Continue reading →

Posted in Ethics, Issue 8: Summer 2010-2011, Social Investment, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Breakthroughs in Shared Measurement and Social Impact

The Foundation Strategy Group; 2009. The breakthroughs reported by the Foundation Strategy Group (FSG) refer to efforts underway to develop shared approaches to measure and report performance across organisations. This informative report highlights twenty such efforts, categorised into three types: Shared measurement platforms Comparative performance systems Adaptive learning systems The research also refers to consistent elements of success across the approaches. These include solid leadership and funding during the multi-year development period, voluntary participation, use … Continue reading →

Posted in Demonstrating Social Impact, Issue 5: Summer 2010 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The End of Charity: How to Fix the Nonprofit Sector Through Effective Social Investing

by David E. K. Hunter, Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal; October 2009. This author lights a fire under funders to promote social impact measurement through social investing. His claim is clear: “Social investing, if widely adopted, will help channel funding streams that are directed by measurable performance rather than feel-good stories, habits of giving and rank sentimentality. And social investing has the potential (yet to be realised) to advance a selection process that either forces poor … Continue reading →

Posted in Demonstrating Social Impact, Issue 5: Summer 2010 | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Measure? Nonprofits use metrics to show that they are efficient. But what if donors don’t care?

by Katie Cunningham and Marc Ricks, Stanford Social Innovation Review; Summer 2004. Do donors really care about performance measurement? According to this Stanford Social Innovation Review piece: not really. Through interviews with individual donors, the authors reveal that the real motivations behind giving are a personal connection to the cause, leadership, or trustees. There is also a widespread belief in the donor community that there’s not much difference between organisations engaged in similar work. Individual … Continue reading →

Posted in Demonstrating Social Impact, Issue 5: Summer 2010 | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Women Think

by Paula Curtis, Fundraising and Philanthropy; December 2009 / January 2010. Paula Curtis’s contribution to Fundraising and Philanthropy points out that women are increasingly important donors to the social impact sector. Curtis, who is President and CEO of Opportunity International of Canada, notes a number of important lessons from research on women and giving: 1. Women control household decisions pertaining to charitable giving and make 80% of the overall spending decisions 2. Single women are … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 6: Autumn 2010 | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off

Ten Nonprofit Funding Models

by William Landes Foster, Peter Kim, and Barbara Christiansen, The Stanford Social Innovation Review, Spring 2009. This article recommends that a new shorthand lexicon is needed for nonprofit leaders to articulate quickly and clearly how their organisations are focused and financed. The authors provide a useful cheat-sheet to alleviate funding fuzziness in the nonprofit sector. They identify the following ten nonprofit funding models: 1) Heartfelt connector – focusing on a cause that resonates with people … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 3: Autumn 2009 | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Lives Of The Saints: International Hardship Duty In Chad

by Jonathan Harr, The New Yorker; January 5, 2009. This New Yorker piece depicts the challenges of leadership in a field office situated on the eastern frontier of the African nation of Chad. Chad is considered a hardship posting within the ranks of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR.) The office is situated close to the Dafur border, where nearly two hundred and fifty thousand Sudanese have fled to escape death, mayhem, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 2: Summer 2009 | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off

Financing Civil Society: A practitioner’s view of the UK social investment market

by Louisa Mitchell, John Kingston, and Emilie Goodall, Venturesome; September 2008. This article is essential reading for those seeking to better understand the emerging social investment marketplace. In a nutshell, social investment aims to achieve both social and financial returns. Laden with case studies from the UK, the authors argue that social impact organisations are most effective when they strategically target social investors instead of becoming caught in the vicious cycle of short-term fundraising. Mitchell, … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 1: Spring 2008 | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

Non-Profit Capitalism

The Economist, print edition; September 11, 2008. Under the banner: ‘The Business of Giving’, The Economist reports on the latest trend in not-for-profit fundraising circles: the Initial Public Offering (IPO). IPOs were the golden child of the dot.com era, occurring when a company floats its stock on a public stock exchange and the shareholdings become publicly available. Now, some nonprofits in the US have launched their own ‘IPOs’ as part of their fundraising efforts, following … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 1: Spring 2008 | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

Achieving Breakthrough Performance

by Mark Gottfredson, Steve Schaubert, and Elisabeth Babcock, Stanford Social Innovation Review; Summer 2008. How might social sector leaders position themselves to weather economic storms and ultimately flourish? Drawing on extensive consulting experience and not-for-profit management, authors Gottfredson, Schaubert, and Babcock outline a path to ‘breakthrough performance’. The authors define this as: “the kind that positions nonprofits to create high levels of social impact and lasting change.” To achieve such status, they identify four principles: … Continue reading →

Posted in Issue 1: Spring 2008 | Tagged , , , | Comments Off