MQ is a London-based charity with a mission to create a world where mental illness is understood, effectively treated and ultimately prevented. Their secret to success? An extraordinary faith in relationships.

In today’s shifting philanthropy landscape, the distance between donors and fundraisers is shrinking, with venture approaches on the rise and competition at its fiercest. So how can fundraisers adapt to this context?

The rise of social media has created an increased demand for community managers, also known as the people who run your social channels to engage your supporters. As your nonprofit’s online community grows, it’s important you have the right person in place to manage it.

Since the UK’s 2013 Equal Marriage Act there has been an alarming drop in donations of every size to LGBT causes, and we have not seen any funding shift from marriage campaigns to other vital needs within the community — it’s simply disappeared.

Whether you’re fundraising, awareness raising, or simply trying to reach new audiences, influencers can be a highly effective way of amplifying your charities digital efforts.

ActionAid explains how they set out to change the focus of their programmes to women and girls and to more complex, longer-term, systemic and strategic work, without losing major donors. How did they accomplish this? By allowing their donors to contribute to their strategy.

Islamic Relief UK’s Deputy Director of Fundraising, Tufail Hussain explains his unique WhatsApp fundraising strategy, which involves him exposing himself to the work of his charity in a way that lets him authentically communicate about it to donors.

On Monday 12th March, I.G. Advisors held a Major Gifts Surgery in partnership with the Hospital Club Foundation. A challenge we regularly see at I.G. is there are more major gifts fundraising roles in this sector than there are major gifts fundraisers. So, we hosted this Surgery as an opportunity to answer questions candidly, and provide insights to help the sector kick it up a notch.

This week on our podcast What Donors Want, we’re thrilled to have Comic Relief’s Head of Funding Partnerships, Adam Askew, to give us exclusive insight into Comic Relief’s decision-making processes, as well as excellent fundraising advice.

In the UK charity sector where 65% of staff and 70% of fundraisers are women, you would hope that feminism would be intrinsic to our work and decreasingly necessary. But unfortunately, this is far from the case.

The idea I presented at SOFII’s I Wish I’d Thought of That (IWITOT), took place in the mid-1980s. For wildly different reasons, two groups — the LGBT community and families of striking miners — were being similarly ostracised, demonised by the media, and facing police brutality. Out of these two bleak and painful circumstances rose a brilliant idea: Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners.

A well-functioning major donor programme can provide a powerful return on investment for charities of every size. However, before starting your major donor fundraising adventure, there are some key issues you need to consider.