Most fundraisers know how crucial it is to build genuine relationships with people who care about your cause. But doing it in practice can be far from easy!

Amy Swart is a very experienced relationship fundraiser and is Director of Fundraising and Communications at the suicide-prevention charity James’ Place. Building warm, two-way relationships with supporters, including major donors, trusts and foundations, is fundamental to the charity’s approach. This mindset has been a major factor in the wonderful growth they have achieved in recent years.

In this conversation Amy shares her approach, with practical tips and encouragement for fundraisers and charity leaders determined to build excellent, long-term relationships with supporters.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

There are plenty of really good books specifically about fundraising. We’ve also found it invaluable for fundraisers to read well-written books on related subjects. But which ones are worth your time? If you’re on the lookout for a good read and some different perspectives, we’ve created a Books that Inspire Fundraisers – The Super Six, which you can access with this link.

And in this episode Bright Spot trainers Rob and Ben share the first three on our list. We explain why we love each book, and a bunch of ideas you can apply in your fundraising, even if you don’t have time to read the books.

Among other things, this conversation includes: a fascinating insight about how to improve valuable skills more quickly; two ideas for inspiring supporters; and a little-known technique that increases your confidence in important meetings.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.

How to change what’s not working. Sometimes in fundraising, things aren’t working, you feel overwhelmed, and you don’t know where to start.

The excellent book Reset by Dan Heath is all about how to turn things around when you feel stuck. In this podcast Rob talks to Craig about ways you can apply the Reset techniques to solve difficult fundraising problems.

Heath suggests that in most difficult situations there is one crucial ‘leverage point’ – something that will potentially make the biggest difference. The key is to work out what this is and then stack far more of your resources on making progress here. As you make clear progress, your new momentum makes other things easier too.

Craig and Rob share examples of this approach helping fundraising teams to solve important problems, including how one charity reduced the time it takes to send out thank you letters, from 3 weeks to just 2 days.

We’d love to know what you think! And thank you so much for supporting our show, e.g. by sharing it with colleagues or on social media. We are both on LinkedIn.