Adrian's posterous http://adriansalmon.posterous.com Most recent posts at Adrian's posterous posterous.com Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:32:00 -0700 Ben the Blue Pirate and his magic mirror http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/ben-the-blue-pirate-and-his-magic-mirror http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/ben-the-blue-pirate-and-his-magic-mirror


Pirate
My son Joe is a nostalgic 12 year old. Every couple of years he goes back over his life - school reports and photo albums, back to when he was a baby. It's a little ritual for him.

I was talking with my partner about it last night, and the thought popped into my head, "when he knows where he's come from, it helps him understand where he needs to go next".

That's an idea that's stuck in my mind since I was a child myself, and learning to read with Griffin's 'Pirate Reader' series - does anyone remember it? There were three pirates - Roderick the Red, Gregory the Green, and Ben the Blue. The thoughtful Ben turned out to be the hero of the series.

Ben had a magic mirror. It always showed him exactly where he had been. If Ben was lost, he would look in his mirror, back over his journeys, and then he would know where to go next.

Mark Phillips' collection of old fundraising adverts on Pinterest reminds me of Ben's mirror.

Look over these adverts - from the YMCA and Barnardo's at the turn of the 20th century to adverts from Oxfam and Amnesty in the 70s and 80s, and you can see just how long a journey we've been on as fundraisers. And what strikes me so strongly - from ads that are more than 100 years old - is that our fundraising forebears knew their craft supremely well.

I've seen it myself closer to home, looking back over the historic donations to the university I work for - which ran public appeals at the turn of the 20th century that raised tens of millions in today's money. My predecessors knew their stuff!

I want to find their old appeals for Leeds now because I know when I see them, I'll know much more clearly where I need to go next. Why not have a look at Mark's board and then back into your charity's 'magic mirror' and see if it helps you feel that way, too...

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Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:11:00 -0700 Are there more original voices in UK Higher Ed Fundraising? http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/are-there-more-original-voices-in-uk-higher-e http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/are-there-more-original-voices-in-uk-higher-e

A couple of months ago I spoke at the CASE Europe Annual Conference in Manchester. I turned out to be quite a busy boy - speaking about some of the work we've been doing at Leeds on data modelling, chairing a session by the excellent and provocative Stephen Pidgeon, and helping to feed back on the results of the first attempt by 15 UK higher ed institutions to benchmark the effectiveness of their 'annual giving' programmes.

And now I've got my feedback - and thanks to all who gave me good ratings and constructive criticism! And yes, 45 minutes is not long enough to try and teach folks how to do data mining from scratch :-)

But one of the comments has stuck out for me over the weekend, from someone who evidently thinks I'm a bit over exposed, "there have to be more original voices in the annual fund realm"!

And you know what - I agree! There have to be, don't there? After all, I don't see myself as a particularly original thinker - I'm just trying to take and apply years of what I've learned in charity fundraising outside the university sector, and make it work for the university that now employs me.

Stephen Pidgeons's comments from his Third Sector article about the conference seem very pertinent to me - while he thinks that universities are excellent at soliciting major gifts, he thinks our direct marketing fundraising is 'stuck in the dark ages'. I agree.

I think it's linked to the perception, still very prevalent in the HE sector, that what we do in annual giving is an 'entry level' job - from which someone will progress to the heady heights of major gifts. Which of course is the only route to becoming a head of a university fundraising department.

Many of my fundraising colleagues outside HE will find this unbelievable. The activity that accounts for 90% or more of our individual supporters - 'entry level'? When major national charities have had heads of fundraising who have worked all their careers in the DM sphere?

Major gifts are undoubtedly hugely important to any charity and we universities are pretty good at getting them. But look at the figures for a moment.

I know from screening our data that around a quarter of our alumni give to other charities. Yet only around 2% of those same alumni in any one year give to us, Leeds, their university. If we could inspire them to give to us it would be worth around £2,000,000 annually, that we urgently need! And nationally, because the proportion who give to universities vs other charities are pretty comparable, it could be worth tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds of philanthropic income.

But it requires a massive leap in our messaging and practice. So who's going to lead the way to get our 'annual giving' to the level of our 'major gifts'? Will it be CASE, our university fundraising association? Will it be Bob Burdenski, the much loved and respected godfather (in a good way!) to the UK annual giving sector? One of my excellent senior colleagues in annual giving who do great work but just don't blog or tweet as much as I do? Or a hugely talented young fundraiser in this 'entry level' sphere who could help make the biggest difference to university fundraising in a century?

Come on - let's be seeing you, whoever you are!

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Thu, 06 Oct 2011 00:10:29 -0700 Remembering Steve http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/remembering-steve http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/remembering-steve

Here is what I sent to 'rememberingsteve@apple.com':

 

To the entire Apple family and Steve’s family,

Thank you for giving us this way to write in with our memories of Steve and Apple. Steve and Apple have been part of my life since I was a boy of 11, bereaved, sad and lonely in my first year at boarding school in the UK, and I found my way into the wonderful world of computers that he and Woz opened up to us all.

I can proudly say that I have never owned a PC since, nor had one in my house. I always felt as if it would be a betrayal of Steve’s and the original Mac team’s vision, to make do with something I felt was a second-best rip-off. And like many others, I went through the long years of the mid-90s hoping and praying that that original spirit would return to Cupertino, and (oh my goodness) did it ever.

I’m now nearly 42, and it struck me this morning that at that age, Steve hadn’t yet accomplished the half of what will now always be his legacy. I know I’m not set to change the world in anywhere near the same way, but I can try to bring some of the spirit of Steve into what I do every day.

I work as a fundraiser for one of the UK’s great universities, and it’s my privilege to work with an extraordinarily committed team of young people who are our student telephone fundraising team. As far as I can I try to be a bit of a ‘mini Steve’ to them – I have the glasses, and the beard, a bit more hair (so far), and I’ve occasionally been known to wear a black turtleneck. What I try to give them, above all else, is the joy of accomplishment – of setting a goal that we all reach together, even if we think it’s mad and unattainable when we start, for something in which we passionately believe. I hope that spirit gets across into everything else they do and that they’ll take it on into all the many and varied jobs they’ll do in the world once they graduate – staying hungry and staying foolish, and doing great things.

I can only imagine how sad a time it is for you all right now, but I do have just one more thing. For me, Steve’s defining legacy is that feeling of surprised delight – when he would announce something completely unforeseeable, but suddenly totally obvious. Amidst your sadness, and your sense of things unfinished or never begun, I hope you as his closest inheritors will still be able to epitomise that spirit of his. Please, all of you, be his ‘one more thing’, in whatever way you can. Continue to make his legacy to the world one of surprised delight.

My sincerest and heartfelt condolences go to you all.

 

Best wishes

Adrian

 

Adrian Salmon
Footsteps Fund Manager
Alumni & Development Team
University of Leeds, UK

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Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:39:00 -0700 Friday 22nd July - please support your university today! http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/friday-22nd-july-please-support-your-universi http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/friday-22nd-july-please-support-your-universi

It's Friday 22nd July and it's a red letter day for universities. But you probably won't have heard much about it in the papers. On July 31st, the Government's Matched Funding Scheme for Universities comes to an end. It's a scheme designed to encourage university graduates, like me (and perhaps you), to make charitable gifts to our alma maters. The Government will match every gift given by at least one third, including the Gift Aid the university reclaims on it. The total pot available from the Government is £200 million, but it requires universities to raise the donations to unlock it.

So you probably have two questions now - why's today the red letter day, and why should I, of all people, give a gift to my university?

I'll answer the easy one first. Today's the red letter day because to claim the matched funding they're entitled to - up to £2.75 million in some cases - universities have to show the Government that the donations have reached their bank accounts by July 31st. Given the amount of time it takes for cheques to clear and online gifts to be transferred, today is the last day you can make a donation, online or by post, to your old university and be sure of them receiving their share of the Government match for it.

So that's the easy one answered. Now for your second question - why should you give a gift to your old university? I'll try to give you a couple of reasons.

  1. Your university is a charity. It does work that's been recognised to have a charitable purpose since the 17th century - the advancement of knowledge and learning. Universities have always relied on charitable donations to fund the very core of their work. And many, many of the UK's best-known charities rely on the work of universities to carry out their own work.
     
  2. You'll know exactly how your money has been spent. Universities, believe it or not, are some of the best charities in the country at telling you how they've used your donations. There's a myth that it all 'goes into the Vice-Chancellor's pocket' or into admin, and that's just not true. Depending on how your university uses its donations, your gift could be funding world-changing research, or enabling students from families with no history of university attendance to take their first steps towards a world of knowledge, skills and service to society.
     
  3. Since the Second World War, we've had a proud tradition in this country of making access to higher education, and all the good that it can achieve, dependent purely on ability to learn and not ability to pay. Making a gift to your University's 'Annual Fund' is one of the very best ways that you can help ensure that tradition is still something we can be proud of years into the future.
     
  4. The last one is really simple. Take a look at what you're doing now in your career, or the way you think about the world around you, or the friends that mean the most to you in your life. How much of that might you have had if you hadn't been to university and had the life-changing experience it offers you? I'd say it was a pearl beyond all price.

So today, why not recognise this, in however large or small a way you choose, with a donation to your university? Last year 186,000 graduates made gifts to their old institutions. That may sound like a lot, but it's only 2 people for every 100 of us who've ever graduated from these great institutions of ours. Surely we value them more than that?

So I've made a list of all the UK universities' online donation pages. The ones in England will benefit from the Matched Funding - do definitely find yours and give what you can today. And, if you went to a Scottish or Welsh university, and my words have resonated with you - well, why should they miss out?

G K Chesterton said, "Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another." And in that case I know of no places with more soul than our amazing universities. Let's honour them and help them today.

Thank you for reading and please click through

 

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Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:38:00 -0700 Has Google built a social tool for the professional fundraising community? http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/has-google-built-a-social-tool-for-the-profes http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/has-google-built-a-social-tool-for-the-profes

OK, so I've been playing with Google + the last couple of days.

I have to admit, I was underwhelmed by Google Wave - weren't we all? - and I don't have a Gmail account, so Google Buzz didn't register with me much. So I wasn't expecting Google + to impress me as much as it has. I share with my colleagues in the fundraising biz on Twitter and really enjoy that quick-fire format.

But against the odds Google + has impressed me. I think they've built a network that answers the social needs of professional fundraisers. Why?

Well, the concept of Circles is great. It means I can subdivide the people I know into Fundraising Colleagues or Friends, for a start. And within that I can share with colleagues who work in universities or the wider sector, just by setting up different Circles. Or folk who are interested more primarily in social media, etc. etc.

Once I've done that, yes, it does look very much like Facebook, except that it's now, because of the crossover with Twitter among adopters, like having a Twitter chat with the people I like and interact with regularly there, but with much richer content. So far so good! And there's the Twitter-like freedom of being able to add anyone I like to my Circles without having to worry about the social anxiety from Facebook of how well I know them.

It beats LinkedIn for me because LinkedIn is so much more focused around your CV and treats discussions as a sideshow, particularly on mobile. Also because I'm sharing professional views with who I choose to, I don't have to worry that someone's going to come in on a discussion primarily to try to sell to me. Another bonus.

And then there's what I think could be Google +s 'killer app' - Hangouts. Up to 10 way video chat with just the individuals or people in Circles you want to invite. I tried it last night with Howard Lake of UK Fundraising and Kimberley Mackenzie. I've spoken to them both so many times on Twitter, but this was the first time we'd ever 'met'. It was huge fun, enlivened by my 11 year old son, Joe, chipping in on the chat. We were all impressed by the video quality, and the way it senses who's talking and focuses on them, so that everyone else has a visual signal whose turn it is to talk. You can even all watch YouTube content together. Joe's verdict - "Awesome, Dad. Way better than Facebook!"

I want a webcam at work, now. I really do.

So, a rich blog-sharing/commenting platform where you can post at discretion and break into video chat to discuss compelling issues or content? Sounds tailor made for fundraisers to me. Why not grab yourself an invite and have a go? Feel free to add me :-)

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Fri, 27 May 2011 02:26:00 -0700 Would an online donor list prompt you to support the cause? http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/would-an-online-donor-list-prompt-you-to-supp http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/would-an-online-donor-list-prompt-you-to-supp

I've just been looking at the University of Birmingham's online donor list. It looks really nice - you can search for your year of graduation and see how many of your friends may or may not be supporting the University:

 

Birmingham_donor_list
And it's prompted a debate between me and my colleague - would seeing a list like this influence you to give?

What do you think - yes or no?

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Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:59:00 -0800 Why I love Children In Need http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/why-i-love-children-in-need http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/why-i-love-children-in-need

It's Children in Need day today in the UK, one of a couple of extraordinarily successful mass fundraising events that happen through the year, alongside Comic Relief and Sport Relief. In 2009 Children In Need raised a record-breaking £39 million from the British public, and it will be very interesting to see how it does this year in an even more changed economic climate.

£39 million! It puts the lie to anyone who says there isn’t a culture of giving in the UK.

And I love it for a couple of reasons:

1.  It teaches kids about fundraising. A significant portion of that total will be raised by, or through the influence of, kids. My son’s off to school today dressed in spots and armed with a few quid from us.

But that’s not all. Come tonight when we sit down to watch it, he’s going to ask me, ‘Are we going to give again this year Dad?’ Last year he did an upgrade ask on me:

"How much did we give last year, Dad?"
"£50"
"Well, could we make it £75 this year - you do work for a charity, and you know how important it is!"

I kid you not - his words exactly. So we gave £75. Don't know whether he'll get me up to £100 this year – I have my limits!

But, much as I would love to claim fundraising genius for Joe, I wonder in how many other homes up and down the country similar budding young fundraisers are having the same conversations with their parents?


2.  It raises some interesting questions about stewardship. Children In Need doesn’t do much interim stewardship. All I got last year was a letter about 2 months later thanking me for my gift – very form. Nothing else. No newsletter showing where my donation has gone, nada. And, even so, despite what you might regard as shocking donor stewardship, I’ll give again this year. Why? Well I trust them. I know they have huge numbers of donors and can’t write personally to each one. I want them to spend the money on helping the kids, not writing to me. And I suspect the majority of people feel the same way, because you can’t raise tens of millions year-in-year-out without a very substantial number of repeat givers.

So is the amount of stewardship you need to do in inverse proportion to the level of trust your donors have in your cause? Hmm…

But in fact they do their stewardship on the night each year because…


3.  They do great video. Well of course they should, as it’s a TV appeal. But they always nail the most important thing about any video appeal for me – the background music. Maybe it’s because I’m also a musician, but I find the charity television ads that are most likely to rouse me to action are those that have a great backing soundtrack. More than any of the images on screen or the script, a well-chosen, emotive but not too mawkish song will get me every time.

 

So here we go again. Let’s watch and learn!

 

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Mon, 01 Nov 2010 03:12:00 -0700 Donations to Universities in the news again http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/donations-to-universities-in-the-news-again http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/donations-to-universities-in-the-news-again

This article got published in the Times on Friday (behind the pay wall) http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/education/article2786314.ece

I'll quote a couple of sentences (my italics), "Hard-up universities are aiming to raise billions of pounds in the next few years by seducing their alumni into donating to US-style fundraising campaigns..."

"Students starting university this term face being lobbied for donations as soon as they graduate.."

It's interesting the language that gets used when discussing charitable donations to universities, isn't it? 'Seducing', 'lobbying', both pretty double-edged words! Has Oxfam 'seduced' its hundreds of thousands of donors? Or Save the Children? Of course not. They've invited people who care deeply about their mission to join them and help to make a difference, and those people have responded.

Well, as a member of a university fundraising team, working for a university that is a charity in totally the same way as the two famous charities I've mentioned above, that's no different to what I and my colleagues do every day. And we shouldn't forget that the vast majority of our alumni donors are by no means billionaires, but 'ordinary' people like you or me, who feel a deep gratitude for having had the opportunity to access all the treasures of higher education pretty much for free, and feel passionately that that opportunity mustn't be denied to the generations who come after us.

Facilities and research are undoubtedly hugely important, but that shouldn't mean that giving back to universities is just seen as the preserve of the mega-rich. All of us who are graduates can do our part to ensure that access to our universities remains possible for all, by giving small monthly amounts - often no more than the cost of a daily paper like the Times, Telegraph or Guardian each week. And with all those modest gifts we can provide tens, no, hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of scholarship provision, to ensure that future students don't have to worry about which university they can afford, but can go to the very best one they can aspire to.

That's why I do what I do, and I believe in it whole-heartedly.

The other day I spoke to one of my alumni donors who called in to enquire about her regular gift. When I checked her details I found that she had two gifts coming out each month and I asked if we'd by any chance made a mistake? She said no, that was entirely what she'd intended. But she wasn't calling to ask about those two, but another, joint gift, she and her husband were making! It had stopped and she wanted to restart and increase it, having heard the news about the CSR.

When I'd got all the details straight, I said to her, "You're doing an awful lot for us, Mrs X," because I didn't see anything to suggest that she or her husband were hugely well-off. She replied that she felt it was the very least they could do to acknowledge the huge difference their time at university had made to them.

There's a 'Giving something back' article on the Times from the same day - the call-out boxes from the printed version of the article, I think. Have a look at those and if you feel the same way, find your university's alumni webpage (there are some handy links here ) and sign up to a gift of a few pounds each month. You'll be helping to change lives, and, until the end of July, the Government will match your donation, making it worth even more.

Education is priceless - let's do all we can to make sure anyone who can benefit from it, does so. And let's help keep our universities the pride of the world.

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Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:12:00 -0800 Charity branding and donor needs - more thoughts http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/charity-branding-and-donor-needs-more-thought http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/charity-branding-and-donor-needs-more-thought

I did an interview with one of my student callers last week for her dissertation, which is all about branding in the charity sector. It was great fun and she asked some questions that didn't fit with my experience of the sector but which set me thinking.

Laura thought there was a resistance in the sector to the idea of branding and so we talked about the huge effort lots of charities put into their visual identity and messaging, to show this wasn't really the case. But of course that's at national and global level with some very big players. Maybe smaller charities indeed don't want to go there for all sorts of reasons. But as I also said to Laura, just because you have a lovely visual identity doesn't mean you have a brand. Not unless your supporters know you and think about you in a particular way, and even then, their 'brand memory' of you may be out of step with your current positioning - Parkinson's Society, for example!

But big or small you may fall into one of these brand groups:

1. The 'local'/'close knit group of supporters' identity. Defined by a particular area of the country or a group of people which feels marginalised and under/misrepresented. Feels like a family.

2. The national campaigning charity. They right wrongs we care about.

3. The 'personality' brand. In the commercial sector, this is Apple. Joanna Lumley and the Gurkhas, perhaps in ours? We trust Steve Jobs. We love Joanna.

4. The international/global fixer - Oxfam, Amnesty, Wateraid, Red Cross, we all know them! We want to be the kind of person their branding implies.

These are crude groupings of course, but the key thing is that you need to know where within these you fit in order to have your best impact.

And also, the bigger you get, going by Mark Phillips' research at Bluefrog, the more of a challenge you'll have in presenting yourself the way donors want you to be - personal, relevant to them, and running off a small cost base!

Funnily enough, some of us, like universities, have a 'global/ international' corporate brand, but looking at our donor numbers should we be presenting ourselves as a 'close-knit group of people who care' charity brand? Does that make sense? It certainly presents a challenge in mediating between our corporate and philanthropic branding.

Do we all need, particularly if we're bigger, to split what we do into 'family size' chunks, so that even if our donors rationally know they're giving to something big, they all feel like a special group of people who care?

Do we need well-trained people in supporter care and stewardship who can translate large sums donated by many, into personal meaningful feedback for individual supporters?

I think we do - how about you?

Adrian

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Sun, 07 Mar 2010 07:23:00 -0800 What are my needs as a donor? http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/what-are-my-needs-as-a-donor http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/what-are-my-needs-as-a-donor

This was in response to a very good blog post by Kimberley Mackenzie, which has prompted some great comments.

My needs as a donor?

1. Prompt acknowledgement of my support

2. Not getting my next appeal before my acknowledgement!

3. I'm not so fussed on how I'm fed back to myself, but it would be nice to know once in a while that my support had actually helped do something, in fairly simple terms! I don't tend to do more than skim newsletters and I tend to ditch emails unless they really grab me. And I don't have time to attend events.

4. To feel that my support isn't just taken for granted.

But then I'm a busy fundraiser and my giving is coloured by my knowledge that there's someone like me at the other end, manically watching their response rates and average gifts.

I think the tricky thing with donor needs is how you balance meeting those needs with the reality of your organisation. What if a donor has 'champagne needs but a beer budget', for example? I think we all as fundraisers know some, and may be guilty of being them as well with the causes we support!

So, what I try to do is make sure that, as far as possible, donors who give to us at Leeds get the sense that there are real people receiving their gifts on students' behalf, who'll engage with them in a human way if they want to be engaged with.

If someone expresses concern through one of our telephone appeal calls, I'll do my best to write back personally and address the issue, explaining a bit about how we work if I need to make things a bit clearer. I think the phone is a fantastic fundraising tool, just because of that opportunity it can open up for a real dialogue with some donors.

I'm sure I don't always get it right, but I do try to remember that people want to give to people, and that that holds true for donor care just as much as for design and copy.

Adrian

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Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:03:00 -0800 Securing the promise http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/securing-the-promise http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/securing-the-promise

Quite a bit on Twitter yesterday about interruption marketing and its shortcomings. We were reminded, via Angel Fernando's article, of Seth Godin's very pertinent observations and also the concept of 'data smog'

And yet there's still a problem for fundraisers who want to go down the permission route - how do you get the attention of those people who might become consenting members of your 'tribe', to use a Godin expression, 'somewhere down the road'? Surely that requires an initial interruption at some point?

My work for the last 12 years has mostly been in the area of telephone fundraising, an interruption marketing method that is still one of the most effective out there. Why so? Well because at the end of 1 in 5 conversations, sometimes 1 in 3, a promise has been secured, however grudging - to donate to our cause, or at least to consider it in future. And for those who won't make that promise there and then, we know whether it's 'never again' or at least 'not now'. No other form of fundraising, apart from face to face methods, gets to the point of securing the promise so well, or helps us say farewell to those who won't.

So, to change things for the better in the crowded fundraising world, we need people's permission to talk to them - and thus eventually be in the position to secure the promise.

So how do you get that permission?

How about putting a new twist on a couple of old marketing propositions?

1. The 'Send No Money Now' proposition. You've all seen this - it's still used by thousands of commercial companies. Why? Because they're so confident their product will meet our needs, they know once we try it we will gladly purchase at the end of the trial. For us, a send no money, just your contact details proposition, could provide us with thousands more people who aren't ready to make the promise to give straight away, but want to hear how we would use their gifts. We'd also have their permission to follow up. Some campaigning charities, like Save the Children, use text message petitions in precisely this way (scroll down the linked page) - and have got spectacular results.

2. The dating concept. Godin uses this as a metaphor for permission marketing - but what if there were a 'dating site' for charities?
Put in the causes you care about, whether you want to support locally, or further afield, whether you want to support a single cause or spread your support, and how much money you can spare each month, quarter or year. You'd then pick one or more charities to whom you'd either give, or give explicit permission to send you information in future. You could even combine it with the Sarah Beney 'My Single Friend' concept - where donors would themselves endorse charities on the site. Some sites, like JustGiving or See the Difference, might go some way towards this, but there's no site out there doing this yet.

So, what are the barriers? Cost for the one, and perception of competition for the other?

Well, the biggest thing holding us back as a sector is the refusal to invest in long-term value rather than short term. If we invest what we've always invested, with the strategies we've always used, we'll continue to get the results we've always got, or worse.

The second I think rests on a confusion of what competition is, in our sector. We are not competing against each other as causes in the public mind. We are competing against the ability we all have - to send no money now and make no promise whatsoever.

Adrian

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Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:30:00 -0800 Why not give back to your Uni this Charity Tuesday? http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/why-not-give-back-to-your-uni-this-charity-tu http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/why-not-give-back-to-your-uni-this-charity-tu

It's Charity Tuesday on Twitter today. If you're a university graduate why not take a couple of minutes online today to give back?

Here's a list of all the University online giving pages I could find for you

If you benefited from your time at uni - in whatever way - and you believe that the advancement of education and knowledge can be a massive driver of global social change, do support your University in their missions!

Universities generally don't receive the majority of their funding from the Government any more - the direct amount the university I work at receives is only around a third of its turnover. And the support we could receive from alumni, even if only one in ten of our graduates were to give, would be truly transformative in terms of what we could achieve.

An active and engaged alumni community supporting their institutions has the potential to be a massive driver of change.

You can choose to direct your support towards your uni's research and knowledge activity, or to support the experience of those who come as students, and who could go on to make significant individual contributions in all areas of global society, whether locally or on a wider scale. You could be helping someone to come or to stay, who wouldn't be able to do so otherwise.

I firmly believe we should aim to make university education a right for as many people as we can manage - and we won't be able to do that without your philanthropic support.

You can find a list of universities with online donation pages here. Do find your uni, click, and give - and thank you!


Adrian Salmon

PS Many universities will be able to count your gift as part of a new Matched Funding scheme. That means that your gift, plus Gift Aid, could become worth at least double. So even a small gift will go a lot further than you think...

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Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:30:00 -0800 UK Universities Online Giving pages http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/uk-universities-online-giving-pages http://adriansalmon.posterous.com/uk-universities-online-giving-pages

Here are the links to all the UK Universities' online giving pages! If your uni isn't listed it was because I couldn't find any links about giving on their site. The list is roughly alphabetical, but it is long, so why not do a 'Find' (CTRL + F if you're a PC, CMD + F if you're a Mac) on this page, and then click through!

University of Aberdeen

University of Abertay Dundee

Aberystwyth University

Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge and Chelmsford

University of the Arts London

Aston University, Birmingham

Bangor University

University of Bath

University of Birmingham

University of Bolton – download and print a form

Bournemouth University

University of Bradford

University of Brighton – link to download and print a form

University of Bristol

Brunel University, Uxbridge and London

University of Buckingham

University of Cambridge

Cardiff University

University of Central Lancashire, Preston

City University London

Cass Business School

Coventry University

De Montfort University, Leicester

University of Dundee

Durham University

University of East Anglia, Norwich

University of East London

Edge Hill University, Ormskirk

University of Edinburgh

Edinburgh Napier University

University of Essex

University of Exeter

University of Glasgow

Glasgow Caledonian University

Glasgow School of Art

Guildhall School of Music and Drama

University of Gloucestershire

University of Greenwich

Harper Adams University College

Heriot-Watt University

University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield

University of Huddersfield

University of Hull

Imperial College London

Keele University – download and print a form

University of Kent

King's College London

Kingston University

Lancaster University

University of Leeds

Leeds Metropolitan University

University of Leicester – download and print a form, or phone.

University of Lincoln

University of Liverpool

Liverpool Hope University – download and print a form

Liverpool John Moores University

University of London:

Birkbeck, University of London

Courtauld Institute of Art

Goldsmiths, University of London – download and print a form

Institute of Cancer Research

Institute of Education

King's College London

London Business School

LSE

 

Queen Mary, University of London – download and print a form

Royal Academy of Music

Royal Holloway, University of London

Royal Veterinary College

School of Advanced Study:

Institute of Historical Research – download a form

Institute of Musical Research – download a form

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

School of Pharmacy, University of London

University College London (UCL)

London South Bank University

Loughborough University – download and print a form

University of Manchester

Manchester Business School – contact their team

Manchester Metropolitan University

Middlesex University, London - download and print a form

Newcastle University

University of Wales, Newport – download and print a form

University of Northampton – supporters enquiry form

Northumbria University

Norwich University College of the Arts

 

University of Nottingham

Nottingham Trent University

The Open University

University of Oxford

Oxford Brookes University

Plymouth University

Queen's University Belfast

Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

University of Reading

Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen

Royal College of Art, London

Royal Northern College of Music

University of St Andrews

University of Salford

University of Sheffield

University of Southampton – download and print a form

University of Stirling

University of Strathclyde

University of Sunderland

University of Surrey

University of Sussex

Swansea University – contact page

Thames Valley University – download and print forms

University of Ulster

University of Wales Institute, Cardiff (UWIC)

University of Warwick

University of the West of England (UWE)

University of Westminster

University of Winchester

University of Worcester – download and print forms

University of York

 

 

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