Charity Link were absolutely delighted with our win at the Business Culture Awards 2022! This is an enormous achievement and demonstrative of the hard work put in by our talented Learning & Development team, HR director and CEO. In this fundraiser training focused blog, we look at the journey of the face to face fundraiser from complete novice to experienced, identifying key problems and ways that fundraising education could be improved. During a time when many businesses were frozen during lockdown, the Charity Link team used the opportunity to completely overhaul our fundraising professional development so that almost anyone can learn fundraising for success!

The Awards

Upon looking at the list of categories, there were two that stood out as ones we had a real chance of winning.  

These were the 

• Best Coaching, Mentoring & Personal Development Initiative for Business Culture

• Best Learning Initiative for Business Culture

Best coaching, mentoring & personal development initiative for business culture

This award focused on how coaching, mentoring and developing individuals through ongoing, targeted and specific one-to-one conversations, can have wide-reaching benefits for the organisation and for individuals.

The benefits of the right coaching can

• Develop and retain critical talent;

• Provide a stabilising factor during change;

• Facilitate knowledge-sharing and skill-transfer

• Boost people’s performance and motivation

• Support their career transition

Judges were looking to understand how our coaching, mentoring and personal development / performance management initiative and conversations have supported Charity Links organisation’s performance and success.

They also wanted to see how far-reaching the impact has been in terms of developing a coaching culture or more effective performance management.

We were tasked with the challenge of outlining all steps of the project, including planning, implementation, measurement, outcome and next steps.  

Best learning initiative for business culture

The award here was to showcase how effective learning has the capacity to inspire individuals to do their best work and can have a transformative effect on the organisation as a whole.

Innovation in learning and a blended approach to how interventions are delivered have enabled learning to be more effectively embedded, leading to true and long term behaviour change.

Technology has also enabled approaches to be effectively delivered at scale.

We were tasked with showing how our learning approach has impacted on organisational culture and the business benefits that have arisen as a result of the initiative as a whole.

Judges were looking to understand how a focus on learning has been enacted, resulting in a reinvigorated culture that has the renewed confidence of employees and other stakeholders.

As well as describing how the culture of the business has changed, submissions should also fully outline the transformation journey itself, including how any barriers or challenges were overcome.

With the Learning Initiative for Business Culture Award, we were exceptionally proud to be made finalists in the category.

Judges commented that our entry

“Shows the importance of building solid learning support in helping to retain and motivate employees. And then how that can clear business impact.  This is a real transformation in organisational culture and approach to getting the best out of people with a direct link to organisational performance. A very important lesson for others in the power of setting people up for success"

Read more about how fundraiser training can sky rocket donor potential

Our winning entry for the best coaching, mentoring & personal development initiative for business culture award

Our challenge as a fundraising agency

The role of fundraisers is to engage with the public on behalf of our charity clients and find people willing to commit to regular long term donating.  Methods include knocking on people’s doors (Door to Door fundraising, which we call ‘Home to Home’ fundraising at Charity Link) or speaking to them at fixed locations (e.g. supermarkets, shopping centres, and shows (Private Site fundraising).

There’s a business expectation that a fundraiser will deliver a minimum number of donors over a period of time, reflected in a primary KPI of Donors per Person per Day (“DPP”).

DPP was used as a daily benchmarking target for new starters, some of whom had undeveloped skillsets required for the role.  

Professional fundraising – especially fundraising for nonprofits is a difficult job and takes most people months to be good at.

Problems with real world variations like footfall, demographic mix and weather deliver inconsistent opportunities to find donors each day.

Using only DPP, fundraisers quickly aligned success or failure with daily or weekly donor figures and not the actual ability to convert whatever variable amount of opportunities they had.

Inevitably, poor results would quickly demoralise a new fundraiser.

Consequently, fear of a poor result created anxiety, impacting mental health and making it impossible to properly carry out a role that relies heavily on positive emotional mindset.

Read more about how fundraisers can spot and deal with emotional burnout

We needed a better approach to coaching, mentoring and personal development that would enable every fundraiser to reach their potential within a supportive and clearly defined working culture.

Training for personal development

During the first lockdown a Learning and Development (L&D) team was formed comprising of one specialist and three Regional Trainers (RT).

Their brief was to make radical changes to our fundraising courses. The objective was that through better fundraiser coaching, mentoring and personal development we could reduce our high attrition rates. The team was led by our HR Director reporting to the CEO to ensure alignment with company objectives, prompt implementation and buy-in from other managers.

The L&D team collaborated to investigate solutions that focused on differentiating factors the fundraiser has control and influence over from those they don’t.

A trainer with experience from the aviation sector adapted a model used to reduce aeroplane accidents to one that would maximise donors.

This resulted in a visual model known as the Elements of Fundraising that identified these controllable areas:

• Work Ethic

• Attitude

• Fundraiser Skill Set

For an opportunity to gain a donor, fundraiser must have ‘flow’ through all the elements (much like windows). The wider a fundraiser can open each window, the more opportunities to solicit donors successfully.

The model highlights the impact each element has on the overall fundraising process and their relationship to one another.

For instance, increasing work ethic increases donors even if skill set remained static. Introducing negative emotion to the buoyancy window will reduce donors, even if work ethic and skill set are high.

A fourth element, "The Trap Door" represents the forbidden pathway of non-compliant / non ethical donors which should not be signed up.

Upon testing, regional trainers found the model provided a reliable way to objectively assess the basic strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to steer coaching conversations.

The L&D team identified 10 sub-key skills and behaviours based on the model, which broadly aligned to work ethic, attitudes and skills.

We realised that when fundraisers begin to pay attention to their emotional mindset (their inner chimp!) and take steps towards managing that, there’s a vast improvement in fundraising ability.

Read how the inner chimp can affect fundraising and what to do to tame it

From there, a development journey from Fundamental through Developing to Consistent was established with an additional Exceeding category added later.

The structure for the Fundraiser Performance Framework was complete.

The next steps involved adding individual actions or behaviours needed consistently for good performance at each skill level. The L&D team reviewed analysis of fundraisers they had previously coached and built skills profiles on.

A period of field calibration followed, which involved RTs coaching fundraisers whom they knew nothing about. By pairing observations to the Performance Framework, they could easily identify below, on or above target performance with great accuracy, in many cases predicting average DPP to within .5 +/-

By comparing observed actions to the Performance Framework, we could begin to predict the average DPP, regardless of observed results.

Periodically repeating observations gave measure of development, even when results fluctuated through non-controllable elements.

Fundraisers too have an effective tool, aiding self-assessment. They can realign measures of success against controllable performance elements, rather than short term results.

The L&D team have since converted induction into a comprehensive 12 week Training Academy which has had profound success. The Performance Framework is a fundamental and ongoing part of this process.

The fruits of our labour

The project was given the green light in preparation for the start of new recruitment (which was paused during lockdowns until April 2021). Charity Link were fast becoming a front runner of professional fundraising organisations, establishing ourselves as leaders in our field.

Key metrics were

• New starter performance against The Performance Framework (i.e. were they progressing through the framework and if so, how fast)

• New starter retention

The Performance Framework provided trainers with a completely new way of fundraiser training, coaching and nurturing development.

Primarily, it differentiated the controllable and trainable from the uncontrollable and untrainable.

Accountability belonged to both fundraiser and RT, and focused training and coaching conversations were shaped by clearly defined criteria.

These conversations prioritised areas of development and gave opportunity to praise strengths.

The Performance Framework measures the effectiveness of development inputs without overly relying on results (i.e. DPP) during the critical first few weeks.

This not only improves an individual fundraiser’s chances of success, but increases the understanding of coaching processes for the RT.  The result here was an improved quality of 121s.

The Performance Framework enables the fundraiser to self-develop, shifting their measure of success onto what they can control. This boosts satisfaction and confidence while reducing fear and anxiety.

To continue progression from fundamental (basic new starter skills) to consistent (about target) the Performance Framework was expanded to include a performance expectations document, serving to motivate learning across the development areas.

Here, fundraisers are able to see real progress as they complete the many little wins that build the fundraiser skillset, developing personal understanding in the process.

Learn the of levels of performance helps fundraisers to relax and enjoy fundraising, safe in the knowledge that they’ll take the opportunities that come at their level, whilst identifying areas to self-develop or a need for further coaching.

Tracking an individual fundraiser’s development performance against a milestone journey means under-performers or negative development trends can be identified quickly. This enables us to intervene faster.

With the Performance Framework an accurate decision can be made about new starters who would not make target far quicker.

Development fundraising and mentor training scheme costs were dramatically reduced, replaced with significantly better L&D budget with a great ROI. Just as newsworthy was the rate of attrition rates for fundraisers which saw a 700% improvement.

The Performance Framework enabled the L&D team to develop a safe, structured, and measurable training package for new starters within is now our industry leading Fundraiser Academy.

The ability to successfully recruit, coach and develop fundraisers using the performance framework enabled the business to stabilise, grow and deliver excellent financial results.

The strength of these results, and scalability of coaching, mentoring and people development allows confident business growth to take place in 2022 and beyond.

The Performance Framework’s ability to retain more new starters with less training cost has generated a significant cost saving while facilitating growth.

Charity Link achieved one of the best financial results in its 26-year history despite disruption from Covid19 during the financial year ending March 2022.

Training and attrition had traditionally remained at 150-175 fundraisers. The ability now to recruit from a non-experienced talent pool and develop successful, happy fundraisers within a reasonable time frame enables us to expand faster and take the opportunity to grow the business beyond traditional maximums.

Expansion also generates other internal development and progression; the L&D team has expanded from 3 to 5 trainers, along with other admin and learning and communications specialists. We plan to expand the number of regional teams from 8 to 11 and to double the number of charity clients during 2022 – plans which are already underway.

Prior to The Performance Framework it was impossible to qualify whether a result had actually maximised opportunities, only compare it with previous years. We couldn’t really understand why any result occurred or if the tools in driving a result were the old school stick or carrot!

We are already achieving enhanced results, enabling us to better exploit opportunities to grow, despite one of the toughest recruitment markets in recent times.

A much more objective, efficient and strategic approach is confidently actioned, while a cultural shift of understanding, managing and training inputs rather than focusing exclusively on the outputs, is now well and truly underway.

Fundraising training at Charity Link has never been better and whatever your background or experience, we’re confident we can propel you toward fundraiser success. If you’re interested in a career that is challenging yet rewarding and really makes a difference to those in need, we want to talk to you about our  charity fundraising jobs .