EFA now has 24 members in a total of 19 countries. Any organisation can join that shares EFA’s objectives.

France générosités celebrates its 15th anniversary this year, having been set up in 1998 through collaboration from nonprofits including Fondation de France, Red Cross, Greenpeace, Caritas and the Institut Pasteur. It now has 136 members with a collective income in 2021 of €7.5bn.

Laurence Lepetit, CEO of France générosités, says:

“Our mission is to strengthen the enabling environment for philanthropy in France and beyond. As such, we are delighted to join EFA to help strengthen the fundraising sector’s collective voice, and ensure it can play a key role in solving the most important social and economic challenges of today.

“France générosités is particularly keen to support EFA’s public affairs group, in order to monitor relevant legislation and regulation, and to ensure that fundraising organisations have a stronger voice in debates around the economy and society. We also look forward to contributing to work on collecting data about giving across Europe, building on the success of our annual Baromètre de la générosités.” 

Find out more about its work via Twitter (@generosites), or by following it on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Charlotte Rydh, EFA president, comments:

“We’re delighted to welcome Laurence and her colleagues at France générosités to EFA. Each member organisation brings something new, helping us to widen our reach and further our objective of strengthening and developing fundraising across Europe.”

Learn more about EFA membership here.

Picture by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash

Any organisation sharing EFA’s objectives of promoting best practice in fundraising and philanthropy, or developing the profession or industry can become a member. The Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy is EFA’s 21st member, joining fundraising associations and organisations from 18 countries across Europe.

Commenting, Harriet Jones-Day, lecturer in fundraising at the Institute said:

“We’re so happy to join EFA and to be part of a team of members committed to bettering the fundraising landscape across Europe. At the Institute our core mission is to grow the human capacity to love and to explore how we can achieve that through giving and philanthropy. We’re passionate about stewarding that body of knowledge for fundraising, to fundraisers. It was a natural progression for us to join EFA and surround ourselves with the keenest and most brilliant minds so we can deliver the best for our students and continue to grow and learn as an organisation. We welcome you to reach out to us anytime – we’re only ever an email or call away!”

Charlotte Rydh, EFA president, added:

“We’re delighted to welcome the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy as our newest member. The different perspectives and experiences that each one brings are immensely valuable for EFA and our network, and for the European fundraising community as a whole. We are stronger together!”

Members have the opportunity to make their voices heard at European level through EFA’s campaign and lobby work and to develop accredited qualifications for their nation’s fundraisers through EFA’s Certification scheme. In addition, they have access to a wide range of knowledge and research on fundraising and giving from around Europe, networking opportunities with peers from across Europe, discounts for international fundraising events, and promotional opportunities within EFA’s monthly Fundraising Europe newsletter.

More details on the advantages of EFA membership and how to join can be found here.

Picture by Rodnae Productions on Pexels

At EFA’s Annual General Assembly on 26 November 2020, members voted unanimously to expand EFA’s membership structure to a more inclusive and collaborative model.

Rather than requiring EFA members to be national fundraising associations, the new articles of association specify that any organisation promoting fundraising and philanthropy, developing the profession or industry can now become a member.

The aim of the transition is not only for EFA to become more inclusive and representative, but to meet the need for greater international community and outreach, and to provide more opportunities for exchange and learning across the network.

This follows a busy year where EFA has contributed to a range of EU developments in Brussels, re-launched our Certification scheme, implemented our first multilingual survey project, set up new partnerships, and increased our provision of news and resources for fundraisers.

Eduard Marček, EFA president says:

“This is an exciting moment for EFA. Our Board has played an instrumental role this year in guiding us through a period of change and growth, broadening EFA’s membership, enabling us to be even more inclusive and to open our doors to new members across the European fundraising community.”

“Thank you to all those on the Board who guided us along the way, particularly Gosse Bosma, who reached the end of his term and stepped down last month.” 

New board appointments

At the same meeting, EFA members voted in two new board members; Siri Nodland, secretary general of the Norwegian Fundraising Association, and Simona Biancu, vice president of the Italian Fundraising Association (ASSIF).

Marček adds:

“We’re absolutely delighted to welcome Simona and Siri, who bring in further strength and a diverse range of fundraising expertise to the Board.”

During that time, 80 events have been organised (including 63 local and 17 national events) and membership rose by 24.2% or 21.4% if the first 6 months of 2020 are taken into account.  ASSIF is hopeful that membership will grow further by the end of the year.

Such growth enabled ASSIF to continue its activities during ‘lockdown’, promoting transparency, delivering intermediation, consultancy, lobbying, training, research and analysis also in collaboration with sector partners.

The figures were unveiled at the association’s recent Assembly, which celebrated the impact of the outgoing Board and welcomed in the new directors for 2020-2023. The directors met for the first time on June 29, with Nicola Bedogni remaining in post as president and Simona Biancu joining the Board as vice president.

Simona Biancu, ASSIF vice president said:

“What has emerged is the profile of a very active and structured organisation thanks to the work and engagement of its members. We’re hugely looking forward to contributing to ASSIF’s future growth and to actively promoting the role of fundraisers as agents of change.”

Fellow board members include Letizia Bucalo, Michela Gaffo, Francesca Lucci, Davide Moro, Elena Quagliardi (remaining deputy vice president), Lisa Vacca, Jara Vernarecci, Sergio Conte (treasurer) and Rosalba Pastena (secretary).

[Fundraising Europe] Why is the French fundraising conference (Séminaire Francophone de la Collecte de Fonds) such an important part of your annual programme?

[Yaële Aferiat] For almost 20 years, our national conference has been the annual occasion when French fundraisers can get together and learn from one another. Fundamentally, it recognises fundraising as a multi-faceted and meaningful practice and profession, and a personal source of motivation and inspiration.

It’s an opportunity to impart specialist knowledge on all aspects of fundraising – marketing, partnerships, strategy, implementation, sustainability, innovative practices and more. To incentivise and inspire common-good goals such as sustainability, inclusion and access, ethical business practices. And it’s a chance to bridge connections between fundraisers from Paris and other French regions. 

Networking can sometimes be overlooked, but the event has played a really important part in uniting and building the fundraising community over the past 20 years.

What was different about this year’s event?

This year, there was even greater need for the event; an opportunity to discuss how we can react and adapt to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and other topical fundraising issues, including governmental reform. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to meet in person, so we had to do it all differently and take the event online.

Typically, around 650 people attend over the 3 days, but one of the advantages of going online was that we could cater for an even bigger audience, with 950 fundraisers attending (from all parts of France, Belgium, Canada, Lebanon and the UK). There seemed to be an even greater need and drive for solidarity and togetherness in the fundraising community at a time when everyone had been confined in France.

When did you decide to take the Séminaire online?

In France, confinement began mid-March. We had to cancel our Higher Education conference at the last minute, and we immediately began considering alternatives for other events. The Séminaire was just 3 months away and is a hugely important part of our annual work programme. The idea of taking it online solidified after we ran a series of successful Zoom webinars and consulted our community in order to design the right offer. 

But we were concerned about getting the economic model right. People questioned whether delegates would really pay in the same way for digital content. We knew they would – after all, it was the same high level of content. But we had to define the right price. This was one of the most challenging decisions and we may well have been too shy in our pricing. Value for money was very high, particularly when you consider that attendees had the opportunity to follow more sessions that during a traditional event, largely due to the ability to replay missed content. And yet, the economic model was still very successful for us.

What worked particularly well with the event? 

We had some concern that some of our partners might be less interested in participating in an online event, but to our great pleasure and somewhat surprise, almost every partner stayed on board, helping to make the event a real success. This truly reflects the trust they placed in us as well as the overall importance of the event, regardless of whether people would attend in person or from their homes. This was a source of relief for us, as well as a reminder of our role in bringing together the French fundraising community and helping it innovate and grow.

Many of our attendees say they come to our annual Séminaire both to learn as well as meet one another. We created Lunch Labs (feauring less formal, topical presentations from our panellists during the lunch breaks) and networking sessions at the end of the day which brought people in need of new connections and opportunities together. The use of the application ConnexMe also helped bring the community together by linking attendees with the panellists and partners through instant messaging, file sharing and social networking. 

Perhaps one of the most interesting discoveries was that delegates asked so many questions and these were of great quality, adding to the event far more than we’ve experienced during traditional offline events. We are still in the process of dismantling and understanding everything that unfolded, but we suspect this may come down to people not being under the pressure of asking ‘good’ question in a room full of people.

Rather, they formulated their queries on their keyboard and submitted it through a facilitator. These facilitators helped run each session and lunch lab, alongside a staff members. This meant that our panellists felt very listened to and attendees were able to specify their needs at every turn. This was apparent through feedback on social networks and in the ConnexMe application.

Were any mistakes made along the way?

Undeniably, the mistake we have learned most from has been to trust in our ability to innovate even with such a historic seminar. It can be said that this conference has developed a particular formula throughout the years, with similar outcomes expected each time. Though we are happy with how we were able to meet these expectations despite not being physically together in one place to share knowledge (and drinks), we realise there are many other things we could be capitalising on today, notably digital content.

We are now looking to expand our website and other web services such as those we use to stream or backlog our content for those who wish to revisit it, as well as to invest in taking our events outside of Paris and even into other countries.

What does this mean for your future event programme? Will you be doing more online?

Indeed, the main conclusion so far has been to trust in our ability to provide online content in an organised and productive way beyond what we did before the seminar. The many webinars we offered were free and brought together fundraisers who were so in need of content, but we realise now that we can double down these efforts with rippling positive effects, particularly in these difficult times where the possibility of re-confinement looms over most of us and our European neighbours. We look forward to what we can do next building on this experience. Next year will be the 30 year anniversary of the Association, so we are extremely glad to have learned these things now while turning a new page in our history.

About Yaële Aferiat

Yaële is director of the French Fundraisers Association (AFF) and Global Leader of Giving Tuesday in France. She is dedicated towards development of the fundraising profession and inspiring a culture of philanthropy in France.