How to turn Fundraising Convention into real impact
You’ve booked your team tickets to this year’s Fundraising Convention, and now it’s time to work out how to build the event into your planning – as it’s not just a jolly out of the office!
Yes, Fundraising Convention can be fun, it’s great to experience the buzz of hundreds of fundraisers all together, and to catch up with our friends in the sector. But it’s also a place to take in learning, to see what the latest trends are, and to level up your team’s ambitions.
Here’s my six-point guide to how bringing your team to Fundraising Convention, can nurture and inspire them.
1. Build the event into your planning
You know that Fundraising Convention takes place on 4&5 June, so don’t let those days out of the office catch you off guard. You want to be able to immerse yourself in the experience and not be worrying about your work emails or Teams messages.
Make sure you plan the rest of your week around the event, and get your automatic replies set up so you can be in the moment. Encourage your team to do the same, lead by example and show them that making time for Convention and learning is important.
2. Take a team approach to discover certain topics
There are nine different tracks at this year’s Fundraising Convention – that’s a lot of different themes and topics to take in! If you’re coming with colleagues, I recommend dividing up the tracks between you so each of you takes a deep dive into a specific area.
If you’re attending over two days, why not swap the tracks around for the second day, so you all get a mix of sessions and topics. Giving your team specific tasks or information to capture over the two days of Convention helps people to retain focus, and to take in learnings from the sessions.
3. Plan time in after the event to share what you learned
After Convention you and your colleagues will be bursting with ideas and thoughts about what you could do with your own fundraising. Make sure you book time to share your learnings, pls another session to discuss what you’re going to do with all those learnings. This is also a good opportunity for all your team members to present to their peers, building confidence in public speaking as well as becoming a bit of a subject-matter expert.
4. Identify the topics you want to understand more deeply
There will be topics that you and your fundraising team will want to learn more about, to explore more and get guidance on. Identifying what those are, and how they could support your fundraising will be helpful. You can ask one of your team to connect with the speaker from the session, to find out more and report back.
5. Identify what could be built into your team’s fundraising strategy
You will get back to your desk and want to implement everything that you learned, but that’s probably not possible – at least not straight away! Work out what your team’s capacity is, what the quick wins could be, what small shifts could create a big impact, and what could become a longer-term project to explore. Going to Fundraising Convention is all about collecting ideas and inspiration, it’s up to you what you do with all of that afterwards!
6. Pinpoint further development or training areas
Nurturing a fundraising team is all about celebrating what they are already great at and helping them to improve where it’s needed. You might come away from Convention thinking that your team needs further training or development in specific areas of fundraising or in skills like public speaking, networking or managing expectations.
Use everything you have learned from your Convention experience to acknowledge the amazing work your team is already doing, and to find out what areas training or development could be beneficial.
Fundraising Convention is a brilliant event - full of ideas, energy and knowledge. Fundraisers who use all of that wisely after the event will continue to benefit many months after we have all left the venue.
I’m looking forward to this year’s Fundraising Convention – I’d love to chat so come and say hello if you spot me around.