The Philanthropy Summit

So the Institute of Fundraising convenes a Philanthropy Summit at the convention and invites practitioners, pundits and academics (not to mention the Minister Nick Hurd) - so a big fat tick in the box and A for effort. Well done Amanda Shepherd. However the convention itself had only four sessions loosely connected to research and two genuine pieces of fundraising research. Big black mark against the board. And, a question around all those fine words asking for more research, more rigour and more evidence based reports to help present the big picture (instead of all the guru opinion pieces - fun, but increasingly irrelevant).

The questions posed were really quite good in terms of looking at how we might increase giving (both incidence and propensity) unsurprisingly, I think, they suffered from the lack of leadership that the Institute has (and is) experiencing. That's to take nothing away from Sir Alan (sorry Alan Gosschalk that is) who has in the circumstances steered a pretty steady course since the loss in rapid order of two chief executives and the chair. Now we have a new chair and, we're promised, a new CEO soon. But surely vision and mission doesn't come with the CEO but with the board (especially in the voluntary sector).

That is, I think, where we have a real problem. The Institute of Fundraising could do a number of things really well. It could help to make its qualifications mandatory and incentivise all members to become qualified through a structured CPD programme. It could appeal to CASE and lead the field in growth from educational fundraisers. It could help set the fundraising agenda by holding government to account and, by the by, become a chartered institute in the process.

It could do any of these but, I really doubt that it could do them all. So who chooses and how and why? Nobody seems to know and I fear things might just rumble on as always. I do hope I'm wrong in this instance and prove to be a real grump.