This theme was particularly evident in the discussions that took place during the afternoon’s parallel workshops, and in the Symposium’s closing session, where the conversation continued with a presentation of findings from each workshop and questions from the audience.

The workshops were:

Challenges And Potentials Of Education In Fundraising — moderated by Nele Theuer from BIBB, and discussing questions including how educational requirements will change in the future and which developments are needed to meet them; how to ensure that the educational needs of aspiring fundraisers from different backgrounds and with varying priorities are adequately addressed; and how structural characteristics of the German fundraising landscape helps or hinders these developments.

Should I Forget What I Know? Rethinking How Fundraisers Learn — moderated by Heike Kraack-Tichy from the German fundraising association DRFV, which explored the evolving demands on fundraisers and the skills, mindsets, and formats needed to stay effective in a rapidly changing world. The session challenged traditional approaches to professional development, asking what still works and what doesn’t, and how learning in fundraising can become more connected, practical, and bold.

Fun(d)raising 2050: Let’s Rock! Imagining the Future of the Profession: What Will Fundraising Look Like in 2050? — moderated by Pia Tornikoski from VaLa, the Finnish fundraising association. This workshop invited attendees to help shape the agenda and explore the future of fundraising. They discussed emerging trends, potential disruptions and key challenges, both within and beyond the nonprofit sector, reflecting also on long-term developments and who will lead the next generation of fundraisers.

Rounding up their conclusions, the final discussion of the day focused on the evolution of professional development in fundraising, examining the structural barriers to education, the transformative impact of AI, and the shifting organisational cultures required for the next generation of leadership.

Participants agreed that continuous learning should be viewed as a strategic investment that strengthens both individuals and organisations, rather than as an optional add-on. However, it was evident that for many fundraisers, accessing education and training remains difficult, with heavy workloads, limited budgets, and lack of long-term planning often prevent organisations from investing in professional development.

It was also clear that there has been a shift in how people learn, with traditional, authority-led training models increasingly giving way to peer-to-peer learning approaches that encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, and practical experience. This change, participants noted, also reflects broader workforce trends, particularly among younger generations who value interactive and community-based learning environments.

Artificial intelligence, it was noted, can provide valuable support by providing real-time guidance and coaching, as well as automating routine tasks and supporting more sophisticated donor engagement strategies. At the same time however, there was strong agreement that technology will complement — not replace — human skills and qualities.

The discussion also extended beyond individual learning to organisational transformation, exploring more collaborative models of leadership, and ecosystem-based structures where fundraising is a shared responsibility across the organisation. Innovative practices such as dedicated “Innovation Labs” were highlighted as ways to encourage experimentation, reflection, and learning from failure.

Looking ahead, attendees imagined future fundraising roles such as Chief Empathy Officer, Chief Visionary Officer, and Giving Architect — positions blending technological capability with human-centred leadership. These future-focused roles reinforce the idea that the most valuable skills will be those that combine strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and the effective use of technology.

Ultimately, the symposium concluded, the future of fundraising leadership depends on creating learning cultures that are accessible, relevant, and continuous. Organisations that invest in professional development, embrace innovation, and foster collaboration will be best positioned to thrive in an increasingly complex environment.

Key learnings

• Professional development is a strategic necessity, not an optional activity.
• Workload, funding constraints, and limited planning cultures remain major barriers to learning.
• Peer-to-peer and collaborative learning models are becoming more effective than traditional top-down approaches.
• AI will increasingly support fundraisers through automation, coaching, and data-driven insights. Human skills, however, remain irreplaceable.
• Innovation requires dedicated space and time, such as ‘Innovation Labs’ and structured reflection on failures.
• Organisations should foster a “fail-forward” culture that encourages experimentation and learning.
• Knowledge sharing and internal shadowing help spread learning across entire teams.
• Future fundraising professionals will need both technical and human skills, combining AI literacy with resilience and emotional intelligence.
• A common framework for fundraising competencies would help organisations assess, develop, and invest in talent more effectively.

Photo credit: DFRV/Karolina Granja

The EFA Learning Symposium 2026 took place in Berlin on 31 May-1 June. A big thank you to Deutscher Fundraising Verband (DFRV) and their events agency Kaiserwetter for hosting us.

Why fundraising needs a competency mindset

There is a persistent myth about what makes a good fundraiser. Many people believe successful fundraisers are simply empathetic, compassionate and good with people. It helps if they are outgoing, persuasive and passionate about their cause. Some even believe fundraising success depends on a natural gift that cannot really be taught.

Of course, these personal qualities matter. Empathy helps build relationships. Confidence helps start conversations. Passion helps inspire others. But on their own, they do not make someone a competent fundraiser.

Fundraising requires knowledge, skills and behaviours that can be learned and developed: understanding donor motivation, creating fundraising strategies, analysing data, managing partnerships, stewarding donors and much more. The moment we stop treating fundraising as a talent and start treating it as a set of professional competencies, we move from intuition to intentional development.

As fundraising continues to mature across Europe, I believe this distinction becomes increasingly important. Fundraising is increasingly recognised as a profession, yet professions are not built around personality traits. They are built around competencies. If fundraising is to continue evolving, we need a common language to describe what fundraisers should know and what they should be able to do.

Photo credit: DFRV/Karolina Granja

Measuring what matters: Lessons from Lithuania

This challenge became particularly visible to me in 2020, when I was developing Lithuania’s first national fundraising competency development programme, Fundraising@LT PRO. At the time, we brought together 30 fundraisers from different nonprofit organisations. They represented different causes, different levels of experience and different fundraising responsibilities. Some focused on grants, others on individual giving, corporate partnerships or communications.

One question quickly emerged: how could we design a meaningful learning programme without understanding participants’ existing competencies?

Too often, training programmes are built around assumptions. We assume we know where the gaps are. We assume what participants need to learn. We assume which skills require strengthening. But assumptions are a risky foundation for capacity building.

Inspired by Peter Drucker, the renowned management consultant often referred to as the father of modern management, and his famous observation that “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”, we decided to begin by assessing competencies. We developed a fundraising competency assessment test designed to evaluate knowledge and skills across several key fundraising domains. The objective was not to label people or rank them against each other. Instead, we wanted to understand existing strengths, identify gaps and build a programme based on evidence rather than intuition.

The results were illuminating. Most participants assessed themselves at Junior Fundraiser level, while only a small number reached Senior Fundraiser or Expert level. Some competencies proved stronger than expected, particularly understanding of fundraising ethics and the broader fundraising environment. Other areas revealed substantial gaps, especially individual fundraising, donor relationship management and fundraising strategy.

Most importantly, the assessment allowed us to replace assumptions with evidence. Rather than designing a programme around what we thought participants needed, we could focus on the competencies that genuinely required development.

Together with our international partners, we created a learning programme specifically targeted at those areas. Fifteen months later, participants completed the same assessment again.

The results were encouraging. Overall fundraising competencies improved by 22%. The strongest growth occurred in areas that received the greatest attention during the programme, including donor stewardship, fundraising strategy and community fundraising. Perhaps even more significantly, most participants progressed from Junior Fundraiser to Senior Fundraiser level, while the number of Expert-level fundraisers tripled.

Click images to enlarge

For me, the most important lesson was not the percentage increase itself. It was the confirmation that when competencies are clearly defined, assessed and intentionally developed, professional growth becomes visible and measurable. And once development becomes measurable, it can be managed strategically.

Beyond training: Building stronger fundraising teams

At the same time, the project revealed an important limitation. The competency assessment helped us understand where people were. It did not fully answer the question of where they should be.

We could identify competency gaps, but we lacked a framework that clearly described what fundraising excellence looked like at different stages of professional development. We needed something that could help organisations not only assess competencies, but also define expectations and create a roadmap for growth.

This led me to the concept of the Fundraising Competency Matrix*.

A competency matrix is a practical framework that defines the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for effective performance in a particular role or profession. It helps organisations understand what competencies people need, what level they currently demonstrate and what they need to develop in order to progress further.

Click images to enlarge

The value of such a framework goes far beyond training. It helps identify competency gaps and learning needs, supports workforce planning and talent management, improves recruitment processes and creates clearer career pathways. Most importantly, it turns competency development from guesswork into a structured management process.

One of the biggest shifts in thinking comes when organisations stop viewing every competency gap as a training problem. Training is important, but it is only one of many development tools. Competencies can also be strengthened through mentoring, coaching, peer learning, stretch assignments, job shadowing and practical experience.

When we focus only on training, we tend to ask: “What course should we send this person to?” When we focus on competencies, we start asking a much more useful question: “What experience, support or learning opportunity would help this person develop?”

The competency matrix helps organisations make these decisions intentionally rather than reactively.

It also encourages us to think beyond individual development and look at fundraising teams as a whole. Not every fundraiser needs every competency. A corporate fundraiser requires different expertise than a digital fundraising specialist. A fundraising manager needs different capabilities than someone at the start of their career. The goal is not for everyone to be equally good at everything. The goal is to ensure that all critical competencies are covered somewhere within the team.

This creates a different conversation inside organisations. Instead of asking, “Why are we not reaching our fundraising targets?”, leaders can ask, “Do we have the competencies required to achieve them?” In many cases, that question leads to far more useful insights.

For too long, fundraising capacity building has been driven by intuition, assumptions and individual experience. As our profession continues to evolve, competencies need to become the foundation of how we recruit, develop and manage fundraising talent. Strong fundraising teams are not built by chance. They are built through intentional investment in competencies.

Fundraising is not a talent. It is a profession. And professions become stronger when competencies are visible, measurable and continuously developed.

*The Fundraising Competency Matrix is available here and can be downloaded and adapted for use.

About Giedrė Šopaitė

Giedrė Šopaitė is a strategic philanthropy consultant, speaker and trainer with over 20 years of experience in the Lithuanian NGO sector. She is the founder and CEO of Baltic Fundraising Hub, supporting nonprofits in fundraising strategy and competency development, and advising companies on strategic philanthropy. Giedrė created Fundraising@LT PRO, Lithuania’s first fundraising competency development programme, and serves as an EFA board member. Her work focuses on strengthening fundraising professionalism, leadership and ethical, impact-driven philanthropy.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/giedresopaite/

Moderated by Pia Tornikoski, the Symposium panel brought together Zoe Oldham of Upsall International and Jeanette Eesmann-Foster of Mindwize to discuss what organisations should look for when recruiting fundraisers and the competencies fundraising leaders will need in the years ahead. On competencies, the panel highlighted strategic thinking, leadership and people management, data and AI literacy and stakeholder engagement, among others.

Recruiting insights

According to Zoe Oldham, organisations frequently search for a “unicorn” candidate: someone who can bring networks, raise substantial income immediately, manage teams, think strategically and fit perfectly into organisational culture. Such expectations often reveal deeper organisational challenges.

Jeanette Eesmann-Foster highlighted the importance of sustainable income and long-term investment. She argued that organisations often seek short-term fundraising gains when they should be investing in systems, data and donor relationships that create sustainable growth.

The panel repeatedly returned to the importance of realism. Successful recruitment begins with realistic expectations, alignment between leadership and fundraising teams, and a shared understanding of what fundraising can achieve over time.

One of the strongest themes was the growing professionalisation of fundraising. Across Europe, fundraising is increasingly recognised as a discipline requiring formal competencies, continuous learning and professional standards. Several participants noted that certified fundraising qualifications are appearing more frequently in recruitment processes. Certification and professional education are increasingly valued across Europe.
The conversation also highlighted resilience. Fundraising leaders increasingly operate in high-pressure environments characterised by ambitious targets, economic uncertainty and changing donor expectations. The panel suggested that resilience, peer learning, mentoring and wellbeing support should become recognised elements of fundraising leadership development.

Fundraiser retention is becoming as important as donor retention

The panel concluded that fundraising success depends less on individual heroes and more on organisational readiness, leadership and long-term investment. Organisations must be fundraising-ready before hiring fundraisers.

Perhaps the most important conclusion was that fundraising success cannot be separated from leadership. Organisations that invest in people, learning, culture and long-term thinking are better positioned to recruit, retain and support successful fundraisers. Both speakers highlighted that fundraising is under increasing pressure and burnout is becoming a significant issue.

Another recurring theme was retention. Just as organisations focus on donor retention, they must also think about fundraiser retention. Frequent staff turnover undermines institutional knowledge, disrupts donor relationships and weakens long-term fundraising performance.

As the Symposium demonstrated, the future of fundraising is not only about raising more money. It is about building organisations where fundraisers can thrive, adapt and contribute over the long term. Leadership quality and organisational culture strongly influence fundraising success.

The project is being carried out in Australia and New Zealand in three phases, and will form a foundation for the ethics of school fundraising that will apply in other countries. With an expected completion date of July 2025, it is the second major project that Rogare has conducted outside the USA and UK – after its work with AFP Canada on the Canadian Fundraising Narrative.

Project objectives

The project’s objectives are to identify the ethical issues, challenges and dilemmas specific to school fundraising; adapt the ideas, theories and frameworks of professional fundraising ethics to solve these dilemmas; and devise new ways to do this if existing resources are not judged sufficient.

Rogare director Ian MacQuillin said:

“A key tenet of educational ethics is that the interests of the student should always come first, but that creates and ethical tension between the interests of any individual student and the rest of their class. This is something school fundraising needs to consider.

“It’s also been said that the ‘central dilemma’ in education ethics is the conflict between teachers – who want to do what’s best for students; and administrators who want to ensure the school runs according to standards and targets. This can lead to pressure on teachers to act unethically, for example to inflate grades. So a further consideration is whether school fundraisers are seen by teachers as part of the school administration system. Yet it is possible that there will be ethical dilemmas that pit fundraisers against the administrators and the system. These may not be dilemmas that directly involve teachers, but teachers may still be interested parties to the outcome.”

Reviewing current thinking

The first phase has been to review current thinking on secondary educational ethics to identify similarities and differences with mainstream charity fundraising ethics, and make preliminary recommendations for the further development of an ethics of fundraising for schools.

Initial thinking from this work has suggested that lenses of ethics devised for mainstream fundraising – such as Trustism, Donorcentris and Right-Balancing Fundraising Ethics – do not map directly on to the dilemmas faced by school fundraisers, suggesting that bespoke normative lenses of school fundraising ethics are needed. Anecdotal evidence collected by Rogare also suggests that donor dominance, such as influencing student enrolments, selections or outcomes, is a major ethical concern for school fundraisers.

One idea from phase 1 is that fundraising is ethical when it balances the duty of fundraisers to ask parents to provide support, with those donors’ needs and wants.

Devising ways of resolving ethical dilemmas

The second phase will see a working group of Australian and New Zealand school fundraisers collate and catalogue the types of ethical dilemmas encountered in fundraising at and for schools. This will be aided by a survey sent by network Educate Plus survey to hundreds of its members in Australia and New Zealand to uncover the types of ethical dilemmas they encounter, and what would help to resolve them.

The project team will then devise tools, guidance, and frameworks for resolving the ethical dilemmas encountered in school fundraising. These will then be made freely available to the fundraising profession by July 2025.

Phase 3 will begin during the Southern winter/Northern summer of 2025. It will consider how these ideas relate to, and/or may need to be adapted to, the needs of fundraising for Māori, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education. To achieve this, it will seek engagement and input from these communities.

The project is being supported by New Zealand fundraising consultancy and Rogare Associate Member Giving Architects, along with Precision Fundraising in Australia.

Giving Architects Director and Chief Executive Clive Pedley, part of the working group, said:

“We have been working in school fundraising environments in New Zealand and Australia for over 20 years. As opportunities for the role of giving and philanthropy in all its forms have increased, so have the demands of leaders, staff and volunteers to traverse a range of situations. This can lead to situations where there are genuine concerns about the rights and obligations of different stakeholders. Well beyond determining right and wrong, legal or otherwise, there is a need to provide an informed and suitable framework and toolkit to help those involved make ethical decisions at critical moments.”

Picture by Pixabay on Pexels

It has come to my attention that I appear to be getting on a bit.

The signs are there.

Sure, there’s the obvious ones, like the gradually increasing clusters of grey hair and the fact that I now have children who are taller than me.

But it’s when I look around a meeting and everyone appears to be half my age that it really hits home. Or having to explain my pop culture references when I’m doing presentations because most of the audience weren’t even born when Stock Aitken and Waterman were in their pomp.

And like it or not, I’m not alone in this. Lots of you are in the same boat. Or the one just behind – but we’re heading in the same direction.

So I thought I’d share some thoughts about becoming a… “more experienced fundraiser” – let’s use that phrase, why don’t we?

1. You know stuff now

The obvious advantage of having been around for a bit, is that you’ve been around for a bit. You’ve been there, seen that and done that. You’ve seen what’s worked and what hasn’t, and hopefully developed an understanding as to why.

At this stage I’ve fundraised through recessions, cost of living crises, wars, natural disasters and a global pandemic. I’ve run countless campaigns for tons of different charities across multiple channels.

I have a good sense of what will work, and what won’t. I know the tricks. I’ve done the tests. I’ve read the books and the case studies.

This knowledge is important, and in a sector where many practitioners have little or no formal fundraising training or qualifications, it’s especially so.

We have a responsibility to pass our knowledge on, to build up the skills, understanding and wisdom of the sector as a whole.

2. But you don’t know everything

The downside of experience is that it can close you off from new discoveries. It can be all too easy for those of us who’ve been around forever to be dismissive of new ideas and the people who champion them.

It’s important that we guard against our experience hardening into an unthinking mantra of This Is What Works or That Will Never Work.

I’m old enough to have tested lots of things in fundraising. I’m also old enough to have seen test results change, or indeed flip, over time.

Past results are no guarantee of future performance, as they say.

Times change. Technology changes, people change, context changes. We need to be open to change too, no matter how grey and old and experienced we are.

As John Maynard Keynes reportedly said, “when the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do sir?”

3. It’s not enough to know what works, you need to know why it works.

I think the dogmatic belief in The Right Way To Do Things stems from a misguided focus on what works, when we should be focused on why it works.

Let’s take an example from direct mail. Everyone knows that all things being equal, long letters (generally) work better than short letters. This has been tested to death across decades of direct marketing in many different sectors and countries.

Hopefully I’m stating the obvious here, but long letters don’t work better because they’re long letters. God knows I’ve read some awful long fundraising letters in my time.

Long letters work better because they address specific donor needs, and perform specific functions.

For instance:

• They allow you to address and deal with any concerns or questions that may occur to the donor while reading it.
• They give you enough room to include important persuasive content such as recognising previous support, expressing gratitude, highlighting elements of donor identity, repeating and reinforcing need, and demonstrating the difference the donor can make.
• They make it possible to use larger typefaces so older donors can more easily read it.
• And they convey a sense of importance and weight to the donor.

It is these things, rather than the fact that it’s simply ‘long’ that make it successful.

Keeping the why in mind, as technology, costs, customs and context change, allows us to adapt our wisdom to the challenges at hand.

4. Retain your old wisdom, while being open to new ideas

It’s so important that we don’t allow our thinking to calcify. There is huge potential in bringing together the wisdom and learning from decades of successful professional fundraising with the energy, drive, radicalism and new ideas of those who haven’t been burdened by our trials, tribulations and failures.

Take an example from outside fundraising – Ireland’s Repeal referendum of 2018. Together for Yes brought together experienced campaigners who had learned often painful lessons from decades of hard work, along with fired up new activists filled with passion, drive, new ideas and approaches. The result, as we know, was a huge success.

We need to do the same in our work.

Which is why the theme for The Fundraising Summer School in 2024 is:

How do we bring together fresh ideas for the future and old wisdom from the past to meet the fundraising challenges of today and tomorrow.

Over two days in Dublin from the 14 -15 of May we’ll be discussing and debating this, and hopefully inspiring hundreds of fundraisers with the ideas, examples, learnings and wisdom to raise more money for the amazing causes they represent. Hopefully I’ll see you there. Book your ticket here.

Damian O’Broin, Ask Direct

About Damian O’Broin

Damian O’Broin is the founder and managing director of fundraising and direct marketing agency Ask Direct in Ireland. He has some 30 years’ experience helping nonprofits and charities to tell their stories, recruit supporters and raise money, and is a regular speaker at conferences.

Picture by Tirachard Kumtanom on Pexels

CFRE International and ASSIF, the association for fundraising professionals working in Italy, have granted CFRE scholarships to the three most recent winners of the Italian Fundraising Award.

The Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) is the only globally-recognised, accredited certification for fundraising professionals. More than 6,800 fundraising professionals in 25 countries are currently CFREs.

The recipients of the scholarship, which funds the US$700 CFRE initial application fee for each recipient, are the winners of the Italian Fundraising Award for the last three years:

– Giovanna Bonora, former fundraiser for Bocconi University, Italian Fundraising Award Winner 2019

– Alessandra Delli Poggi, head of partnerships and new business for Cancer Research Italy, Italian Fundraising Award Winner 2018

– Roger Bergonzoli, director at Fondazione Santa Rita da Cascia, Italian Fundraising Award Winner 2017

To become a CFRE, fundraisers must meet requirements in education and professional practice and performance, in addition to agreeing to abide by the International Statement of Ethical Principles of Fundraising and successfully passing a 200-question exam.

CFRE international president and CEO Eva Aldrich, Ph.D., CAE, (CFRE, 2001-2016), said:

“CFRE International is proud to partner with ASSIF to recognise these three dedicated fundraising professionals. Becoming a CFRE demonstrates an individual’s commitment to confidence, ethics, and professionalism in fundraising. We look forward to working together with ASSIF to grow the network of CFREs in Italy.”

Philanthropic income to UK academic institutions year-on-year rose by 11% in 2017/18, from £976m to £1.08bn, secured by 100 universities.

Universities in Scotland raised the most in terms of new funds secured at more than £61.3m, while Irish universities raised more than £33m with Northern Ireland accounting for £12.7m of these new funds secured, and the Republic of Ireland for £20.2m. In Wales, the total topped £8.2m.

The report uses cluster analysis based on three-year average figures for key variables related to income, donors, costs and staffing, to group participating institutions into six clusters: Fragile, Emerging, Developing, Moderate, Established, and Elite. This year’s report shows a significant increase in fundraising levels by ‘Developing’ institutions, which have seen a 51% increase on the previous year. Meanwhile, ‘Emerging’ institutions have seen a 15% increase. The number of universities other than Oxbridge now raising £5m a year has also nearly doubled over the past ten years – from 17 to 31.

Despite significant increases in fundraising levels over the past 10 years however, the number of people who donate to their university remains fairly static – currently at 1.3%.

In addition:

– For the first time on record, the £300m threshold for new funds secured in a single year was passed by a university

– The average value of an institution’s largest pledge was £2.39m (up from £1.87m in 2016-17)

– Of the £1.08bn, total new funds from top three largest pledges contributed to £353m (£311m in 2016-17 of £976m)

– Cash income from legacies has increased by 19% (following a decrease of 11% from 2015-16 to 2016-17)

Sue Cunningham, president and CEO, Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), said:

“Philanthropy represents an increasingly vital resource for higher education, particularly in uncertain times. As funding sources for higher education are increasingly under pressure, engagement with donors has become fundamental to the success of universities.

“This philanthropic support translates into scholarships for students, investment in research, and thoughtful engagement with communities across all institutions in the survey.”

Developed to provide Rectors, Vice-Chancellors, and Pro Vice-Chancellors with an opportunity to strengthen their understanding of philanthropic fundraising and alumni engagement, the Tour has been designed to help attendees develop their strategic approach to fundraising, and their alumni engagement and advancement.

The three-day study tour will visit and explore a range of institutional settings in the UK and will enable participants to interact with UK university leaders and senior practitioners. The tour visits the universities of Nottingham, Oxford (St. Hilda’s College) and SOAS University of London (formerly The School of Oriental and African Studies), where participants will also be joined by colleagues from Nottingham Trent University, St Hilda’s College Oxford and New College Oxford, Oxford Brookes University, the University of Manchester, UCL, among others, with delegates from countries including Australia, Canada, UK, and Finland.

Anyone interested in joining the study tour should contact fbrowndy@case.org.