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Back in October, I was invited by the good folkski at the Russian Donors Forum to their annual conference to talk about Oxford Thinking: The Campaign for the University of Oxford — the hows, whys, wherefores and what-absolutely-not-to-dos of fundraising for higher education. To prove I visited Moscow here’s a picture of me there: And [...]

Last February, I chaired a conference on Asking for Major Gifts organised by the Institute of Fundraising. Other than trying to keep the day’s speakers to time — something at which I failed almost as badly as they did — my principal other task was to offer a ‘keynote speech’ to kick off proceedings. I’ve [...]

I’m typing this in my now-empty office in the University of Oxford’s Lubyanka-esque headquarters at Wellington Square. After 13 years, Friday was my last day working for Oxford. My Oxford connection goes back still further: it was 17 years ago, December 1994, that I came to interview for a place to read History. Exactly half [...]

The Electoral Commission has this past week published the latest donation and borrowing figures for the political parties, showing that the Lib Dems raised £1,199,623 between July and September this year. (At the foot of this post is the full breakdown of donations (excluding public funds) received by quarter since 2005, and annually between 2001 [...]

Lord (Michael) Ashcroft is a controversial figure in politics. Looking back through my archives, I’ve posted some critical stuff myself, notably here and here. But he’s posted an article today on ConservativeHome — The joy of giving: why the rich should be encouraged to become more philanthropic — with which I can almost 100% agree: [...]

Some 18 months ago, I welcomed the news that the Coalition Government had abandoned thoughts of messing with the Gift Aid scheme for charitable giving — there had been proposals, supported by some charitable organisations, to introduce a composite rate of Gift Aid that would have reduced the incentive for higher-rate taxpayers to maximise their [...]

Yesterday I blogged about how the University of Oxford is asking our alumni for money. But of course saying ‘Thank You’ is at least as an important part of fundraising. Here’s one approach we trialled for the first time this year… by inviting those who featured in our Campaign Report 2011 to utter those two [...]

The moment of truth is here. A couple of weeks ago, I declared: We signed it off today: the first ‘annual fund’ for the University of Oxford in a couple of decades. Well, it was mailed out on Friday, so will start arriving through the letter-boxes of alumni this week. In total, 170,000 people will [...]

I was called by a colleague I know through my day-job last week: ‘What is the Lib Dem position on charitable giving?’ she asked. Beyond a bland ‘We’re in favour of it,’ I found myself a bit stuck for an answer. Initially I put it down to my ignorance, and decided I should do some [...]

Top marks to the ingenious folk at The Good Agency for this legacy advertising campaign pointing out why you may want to hire them to deliver your next legacy advertising campaign. (Hat-tip to Adrian Salmon for highlighting it to me.) The point is a good one: anyone can come up with some marketing schtick about [...]