Best Up-and-Coming Fundraiser

Howard Lake | 28 June 2007 | Blogs

This award aims to encourage those who are still relatively new to fundraising and who have shown aptitude, ability and success beyond their experience.
The shortlisted nominees are (in alphabetical order):
Abi Crawford
Development executive, Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre (MSRC)
Abi joined MSRC in March 2005 with no previous fundraising experience but, because of a family member’s illness, a passionate enthusiasm for providing support for anyone affected by MS.
She has been very proactive in managing her personal development and has completed the Institute’s Certificate in Fundraising Management. She had previously used the Investors in People framework and MSRC has begun the process of adapting current ways of working to meet with these standards. Abi has quickly become the internal champion for IiP.
She took responsibility for the Flora London Marathon in 2006 and nurtured and supported a team of 113 runners with a final total of £200,430 being raised: this represented around half our annual income at that time. She has set clear goals for 2007 to raise income and profile through events based fundraising. She is always 100 per cent dedicated to her job and sees through each task with enthusiasm and a clear focus on our Mission.
Anna Payne
Senior executive, direct marketing, British Red Cross
Anna joined the donor acquisition team of the British Red Cross in December 2005 and was targeted with recruiting 76,000 new donors to the organisation primarily through direct mail, door drops and press advertising.
Since then she has devised and implemented the charity’s most complex and ambitious testing strategy to date for dm and door drops and managed the best ever Red Cross Week donor acquisition dm campaign, raising £190,000. She has managed other mailings and door drops and raised more than £4242,000 from 35,000 new donors in the largest ever seasonal donor acquisition mailing. She has negotiated lower costs on direct mail, coming under budget by £125,000 at year-end.
In 2006 she was responsible for raising over £2m in general funds from nearly 105,000 new donors: a staggering £820,00 above her target. Her proposer describers her as a ‘real asset’ to the charity sector and says she should be ‘justifiably proud of her achievements in her fundraising career so far’.
Deborah Roe
Head of fundraising, Scottish Spina Bifida Association
Deborah joined the SSBA in July 2004 with no previous fundraising experience, and almost immediately found her overall target doubled to £500,000. Working as a sole fundraiser she looked at the existing income streams and created a fundraising strategy to secure both core and new-build funding. She decided to concentrate on using the media to create better public awareness of the SSBA and on in-house activities that required minimal resources yet could yield the highest return, such as trusts.
In less than three years she has helped to secure Gordon Ramsay as Patron and created the ‘Gordon Ramsay Buy a Brick’ appeal to raise funds for a new build Scottish Family Support Centre. With only a £750 advertising budget, she created all the marketing material, designed the Association’s website, wrote the PR briefs and secured free billboard space across Scotland. The Centre was completed in April 2006 and the £250K deficit which had led to her target being doubled, was raised in less than nine months.
She also exceeded the core revenue targets in 2004/05 and 2005/06 and looks to be on target to do the same in 2006/07. RoI for core fundraising has now increased from 1:2 to 1:3 by tripling income from trusts and volunteer fundraising. A second campaign featuring Gordon Ramsay – ‘What’s your favourite F word? Gordon’s is Fundraising!’ has encouraged volunteer fundraising and the introduction of swear boxes has been a great corporate success.
Deborah has made a huge impact and created a positive future for the Association and her success has been in fundraising and through her drive, creativity and enthusiasm.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.