Counterculture
 
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Newsletter
  • Client Portal
Counterculture
  • Home
  • Services
    • Capital Projects and Exhibitions
    • Communications, Marketing, Audiences and Brand
    • Data Management
    • Digital – strategic leadership, skills and implementation
    • Economic Development and Public Policy
    • Events
    • Finance
    • Fundraising
    • Governance
    • Higher Education Advisory
    • HR and Professional Development
    • Interim Management
    • Legal Advice
      • Arts, Entertainment, and Fashion
      • Business and Commercial
      • Charity and Governance
      • Digital, Web, IT and Social Media
      • Employment and HR
      • Music
    • Management Consultancy
    • Project Management
    • Strategic and Business Planning
    • Tax and Accounts
  • Clients
    • Types of clients
    • Issues
    • Case studies
    • Blog
  • People
  • Home
  • Services
    • Capital Projects and Exhibitions
    • Communications, Marketing, Audiences and Brand
    • Data Management
    • Digital – strategic leadership, skills and implementation
    • Economic Development and Public Policy
    • Events
    • Finance
    • Fundraising
    • Governance
    • HR and Professional Development
    • Interim Management
    • Legal Advice
      • Arts, Entertainment, and Fashion
      • Business and Commercial
      • Charity and Governance
      • Digital, Web, IT and Social Media
      • Employment and HR
      • Music
    • Management Consultancy
    • Project Management
    • Strategic and Business Planning
    • Tax and Accounts
  • Clients
    • Types of clients
    • Issues
    • Case studies
    • Blog
  • People
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Newsletter
Home / Clients / Blog / When appearances do matter
Val Young
Val Young • 21 Sep 2021
Associate

When appearances do matter

  • Fundraising

Why appearances matter in fundraising

Effective fundraising is all about building strong relationships with a range of funders over time. Even before you start to build those relationships, appearances really do matter. As a seasoned fundraiser, I spend a lot of time looking at the websites and Charity Commission records of arts organisations and potential funders. In doing this, I’m often looking at how a charity appears without knowing very much about it. Sometimes I come away feeling inspired and confident that the organisation is well managed, trustworthy and accountable, and therefore ideal for investment. Sometimes I don’t. What makes the difference?

Attending to the “hygiene needs” of supporters and potential supporters through a charity’s public persona makes the difference. This is really about the basics: what charities say about themselves on their websites, and in their Annual Report & Accounts, as well as the quality of their evident compliance with Charity Commission regulation.

Here are my thoughts on how charities can keep up appearances and meet those hygiene needs in four different places.

Website
• Leadership – funders like to know who your trustees and senior leaders are, so publish their biographies with photographs online. This demonstrates you are accountable and approachable.
• Policies – if you’ve got them, flaunt them! Put online the policies that you know are important to funders. Your Complaints Policy is a key one for fundraising regulation.
• Fundraising regulation – register with the Fundraising Regulator and display the logo prominently. Consider putting this on every webpage as a footer alongside other funder logos and your charity registration number.
• Credit your funders – not only does it thank them publicly, it also tells potential funders about the company they might keep.

Annual Report & Accounts
• Strategy – use the narrative part of your annual report strategically to talk about the work you have delivered as well as your future plans and ambitions in a way that reinforces your fundraising successes and aspirations.
• Say thank you again – acknowledge your funders once more – you can’t thank them enough.
• Fundraising statement – it is a legal requirement for charities registered in England and Wales with a gross income of over £1 million to include statements on their fundraising activities in their annual report. There are specific aspects to cover and doing so engenders confidence in your approach to fundraising.
• Restricted funds – list them and reconcile the amounts involved to any reporting you might have done to the provider of those funds.

Charity Registered Name & Number
• Know the origins of your name – It’s not uncommon for charities to operate under a different name to their registered name with Companies House or the Charity Commission. This can make it difficult to search for you on the Charity Commission register, if you haven’t displayed your charity number. Find a way to clearly communicate your registered name and your operating name on your website.
• Display your charity’s registration number prominently – it is an important fundraising asset. You are required by law to display your charity number on printed and published materials along with your company registration number, if applicable. Place these numbers on your website as a footer on every webpage and make sure the same footer is included in any print and e-communications – especially if you are making a fundraising ask.

Charity Commission profile
• Trustees – keep trustee appointments and resignations bang up to date with Companies House and on your entry on the Charity Commission’s register.
• Charity Commission filing – never file your annual report and accounts late. You don’t want any red lettering indicating your report is or was overdue on your charity commission profile. You will appear to be badly managed, which could be a reason to discount you.

If you are a charity that already does all of these things, then you are an exemplar in attending to the “hygiene” needs of funders, but (I hate to break this to you) this is just meeting the basics in terms of good practice and compliance. So, to apply Herzberg’s two-factor theory of motivators and hygiene factors to funder motivations, these steps alone will not attract funding, but their absence might prevent it. So, how do you motivate funders to give? Now that is a whole other matter …

Counterculture offers a breadth of fundraising services ranging from bid-writing to the development and delivery of fundraising strategies for specific projects, programmes and organisations of all sizes. For an informal conversation about how we can help you, please contact Partner, Val Young

£1.57 billion package welcomed but sector must seize opportunity for change

Tom Wilcox • 5 Jul 2020

What Next After NPO Announcements? Managing Shifts in Uncertain Times

Andrea Nixon MBE • 24 Oct 2022

Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings Restoration

Sarah Morris • 23 Nov 2022

Arts and Heritage funding during COVID-19

Zoe McLeod • 7 Apr 2020

Cultural leader and experienced arts manager, Jenny Langlands, joins Counterculture Partnership LLP as a Partner

Tom Wilcox • 28 Oct 2022

Expanding arts consultancy practice, Counterculture, welcomes Louise Hutchinson and Sharon Armstrong-Williams as Partners

Tom Wilcox • 25 Aug 2022

Follow us on: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

The Legal 500 – The Clients Guide to Law Firms

Counterculture Partnership LLP is a Limited Liability Partnership registered in England, number OC370322. Authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (No: 623129). Hall & Birtles Solicitors is a trading name of Counterculture Partnership LLP. A list of members, and their respective professional regulators, is available for inspection at our registered office, Unit 115, Ducie House, Ducie Street, Manchester, M1 2JW.

In accordance with the disclosure requirements of Provision of Services Regulations, our professional indemnity insurers are Newline Group (4th Floor, 55 Mark Lane, London, EC3R 7NE and Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SE (28 Koniginstrasse, Munich, Bavaria 80802, Germany). Our policy numbers are (for our consultancy services) GBF013895230 (Allianz), NID23045684A (Newline) and for our legal services, GBF009910220014 (Allianz). The territorial coverage is worldwide excluding professional business carried out from an office in the United States of America or Canada and excludes any action for a claim brought in any court in the United States of America or Canada.

Privacy | Terms of Use | Cookies | Complaints | Equality Diversity & Inclusion

Manage Cookie Consent
We use cookies to optimise our website.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
Preferences
{title} {title} {title}