The year was 1995. It was marked by significant global events including the end of the Bosnian War, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the launch of Microsoft Windows 1995. It saw the release of iconic films like Toy Story and Batman Forever, Friends arrived in the UK, and Blur and Oasis went toe-to-toe in the Battle of Britpop. I also got my first job.
I left university after seven years with academic qualifications up to my eyeballs but sadly, it seemed, no skills of any practical use in the workplace. To fill my time between sending off increasingly desperate job applications (did I really want to research which plants could alleviate ‘sick building syndrome’ with Rentokil in East Grinstead?), I become a volunteer at Northumberland Wildlife Trust, putting what skills I did have to use in practical conversation and habitat surveying. Later that year, the Trust took a chance on me and I became a fundraiser in their small but perfectly formed marketing department. It was not my dream job – I had intended to become the next David Attenborough from an early age – but it was a foot on the employment ladder. I could, of course, change paths as I gained experience in the workplace, couldn’t I? Thirty years later, I am still in fundraising.
Looking back, I don’t regret it. I have worked at some amazing places from Kew Gardens and the Natural History Museum to UNICEF. I have worked with some fantastic colleagues and met some amazing people along the way, including Sir David Attenborough himself (I didn’t let slip I had intended to replace him at some point), but the fundraising world has certainly changed over the last three decades. My first work computer (not laptop) operated on WordStar. I transitioned to WordPerfect before the arrival of Word. We didn’t have the internet in the office. Finding trust funders involved flicking through the pages of the DSC Top 300 Foundations book. Prospect research more widely meant talking to people and you had to do it physically. When you are based in Newcastle upon Tyne and most funders were based down south, that was a challenge. I remember more than once hopping on an early morning train to come down to “that London” for the day to pitch – often unsuccessfully – at big, scary offices or to meet potential donors in obscure venues across the capital.
What is the point of telling you all this? Well, as wonderful as it is for me to reminisce and to take a walk down memory lane, it’s not actually about telling you how everything has changed; it’s about telling you what hasn’t: the importance of building relationships.
Technology has made all kinds of things in the fundraising space easier. Online databases and the internet make prospect research simpler and arguably more efficient. AI tools can help you write a proposal, develop a pitch deck or create a campaign. But philanthropy and partnerships – my fundraising heartland – still relies on developing relationships and building rapport. Personal relationships can help with the dreaded ‘no unsolicited applications’ dilemma. Having conversations can help you truly understand what is important to potential donors and partners. Meeting people can help uncover facts, feelings and details that aren’t revealed in a Google search. Asking prospects about their families can feel much less creepy than revealing you know their children’s names from research! Trust me, I have seen the look of fear on a donor’s face.
Clearly, this is not about hankering after “the good old days” when fundraisers wrote letters rather than emails and donations came by cheque. Innovation and technology has driven all kinds of exciting things the last 30 years. The arrival of JustGiving in 2000 and text to donate (first launched by CAF in 2010) are just two examples that have made fundraising from the masses easier and have helped raise hundreds of millions for charities large and small. It’s about recognising that new technology should not completely replace good old-fashioned personal engagement. There is a drive to engage younger audiences and technology certainly plays a major role in that, but lots of older donors – and I include myself in that category these days – still value personal connection and respond to in-person conversation. Meeting people and talking to them can lead to a richness of relationship you can’t get from desk research, and it really does help with dispelling myths and assumptions.
I think fundraising is getting harder. Without sounding as though I am a character from Last of the Summer Wine (look it up if you are under 30), it was a simpler time when I started philanthropy fundraising. We didn’t have digital, let alone social media. Contactless giving would have been seen as witchcraft. Now fundraisers not only need to understand the basics of their fundraising discipline, they need to understand new tools and technology. They need to get a handle on increasingly complex funding and partnership models. They need to understand impact, theory of change and data analytics. This is not a bad thing, but it does risk relationship fundraisers having less time to do what it says on the tin: build relationships.
It is important to embrace technology – even my 92-year-old dad shops online and streams the Premier League – but I urge you all to pick up the phone or arrange a coffee with a donor like we did in the old days. It will pay dividends.
Okay, I need to log off now. Teams needs to update and my Mac tells me I am being upgraded to Sequoia (as a botanist, Sequoia means something completely different to me). I wonder if the new OS comes with WordStar…?
Simon Dickson, THINK Director
June 2025
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