SwissFundraisingDay attracts biggest ever audience

This year’s SwissFundraisingDay, the annual Swiss fundraising conference, attracted its biggest ever audience with 270 delegates in total.

The conference, which is held in German, took place in the Swiss capital Bern and saw almost a third more delegates attend than in previous years. The one-day event featured approximately a dozen speakers from both the profit and non-profit sectors presenting speeches as well as workshops and case studies.

During the conference, NGO Helvetas received SwissFundraising’s Action of the Year Award for the outstanding return of its mail package “Tansania”, while Public Eye won the Innovation of the Year Award for its campaign “Return to Sender”, which addressed the issue of dirty diesel usage in Western Africa and commodity trading companies in Switzerland.

Swissfundraising has also recently redesigned its website as well as the conference site. The conference website is a free knowledge resource for fundraisers and holds more than 100 presentations in German from nine years of the annual conference, dating back to 2009. It also includes case studies on fundraising campaigns.

A French language conference takes place later in the year. Journées romandes de formation Swissfundraising, will take place in Lausanne. This will take place on 10 October with a hundred delegates expected to attend. As with SwissFundraisingDay, the conference is open to everybody in the sector. The day after the conference, delegates will be able to subscribe to seminars, known as cours intensifs. These include a session on corporate fundraising and developing excellent partnerships with companies, and a session on reporting outcomes and impact to donors.