Key Takeaways from Altair’s CIOF Convention Session: Fundraising Strategies for Small Charities

On Tuesday 9^th June, Altair and the Fashion and Textile Children’s Trust (FTCT) delivered a joint session at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising Convention in London. The session, titled “Starting from Scratch: Creating and implementing a fundraising strategy with limited resources”, highlighted the transformative journey FTCT has taken over the past three years.

FTCT, a grant-giving charity that supports the children of individuals working in the UK fashion and textile sector, operates with a small but dedicated team of six. Despite their size, they  award around £400,000 in grants each year, funding essential items for children living in financial hardship. When they first started working with Altair’s Community Impact, Fundraising and Strategy team in 2022, they had never proactively fundraised before and were unsure where to begin.

Our presentation at the convention detailed FTCT’s journey over the last three years, including the challenges faced, lessons learned and milestones achieved. We were delighted to get a positive response from the attendees and wanted to share with you some of the takeaways from our session. Below we have listed the five main challenges FTCT faced while developing their first fundraising strategy and putting it into practice and our top tips in addressing them.

Overcoming Challenges: Key Insights and Tips

1.  Lack of fundraising expertise in the team

Top Tips:

• Consultants can be a cost-effective way to provide expertise you may not have in-house.
• Make sure any consultants or freelancers you work with understand your cause, culture, and challenges.
• If working with a consultant isn’t right for your organisation, explore free and low-cost resources, training, and networks you can draw upon such as CIOF, CAF, Fundraising Everywhere, and Fundraising Chat.

2. Budget constraints

Top Tips:

• Identify where your biggest opportunities are and invest accordingly.
• Define what you might spend money on and allocate some budget towards those areas.
• Piggyback as much as possible on free opportunities and find ways to be cost effective.
• Adapt and pivot: don’t be afraid to try a new area of fundraising but if it isn’t yielding results, stop spending resource on it!

3. Time

Top Tips:

• Align your fundraising strategy with your purpose.
• Invest time in creating processes that will ease your workload in the future.
• Be realistic with your timeframe – things will probably take longer than you anticipate and that’s ok!

4. Getting buy in from senior leadership

Top Tips:

• Get trustees aligned behind the overall goal.
• Get trustees involved in and excited about what you are doing. Utilise their skills and networks.
• Use the process as a way to build confidence for other projects.

5. Fear of change

Top Tips:

• Start small and build on what’s working.
• Have a trusted voice to bounce ideas off.
• Celebrate the small wins along the way.
• Feel the fear and do it anyway!

Celebrating Success

The results of FTCT’s efforts speak for themselves. In 2022, they had no dedicated fundraising resource, only five corporate partners, and a fundraising income of £54,000 per year. Today, after working in partnership with Altair to create a robust fundraising strategy, they have a Fundraising Officer in post, 30 committed corporate partners, two annual fundraising campaigns, and raise £145,000 per year!

If you would like to see the full session slide deck or have an informal discussion about how Altair can support your charity with fundraising, please get in touch here.