Books

There are currently two books on offer authored by the partners.

Marketing Strategy - For effective fundraising by Peter Maple published by the Directory of Social Change - 2003

Book Description

This exciting new addition to the DSC/IOF fundraising series looks at the key role played be marketing in successful fundraising. Importantly however it should be of value to any student of marketing or practitioner looking to work more effectively in their use of the marketing function.

Synopsis

This new addition to the series looks at the key role played by marketing in successful fundraising. Drawing on the experiences of the author at the YMCA, Arthritis Care; Leonard Cheshire, Brooke Animal Hospital and other charities, with contributions from many experts in the field, the book covers:

• Why charities need marketing and why marketing needs charities

• A brief history of marketing

• Preparing a marketing strategy

• The charity as a brand

• Stakeholders and shareholders

• Volunteers - the unique benefit proposition

• Marketing communications

• Reaching the right audiences

• Marketing and what the future might hold

• Glossary and sources of further information.

The main thesis of the book is that whilst charities still have an awful lot to learn about marketing, and in particular integrated marketing, from the commercial world; the for profit sector can learn a tremendous amount from the not for profit world about effective tactical marketing and about getting quarts out of pint pots.

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Women and Mental Health by Barnes and Maple published by Venture Press – 1992

The authors make good use of case studies and analysis to examine and comment effectively upon the issues surrounding the role of mental health treatments with particular regard to discrimination against women over the years. There is sufficient excellent material to enable the book to be used both for teaching and for a clear personal perspective to be reached. I would recommend anyone, man or women, interested in the current issues of intervention, therapy and or discrimination to start here. For an overview of the subject a reader may need look no further.

Paperback - 180 pages (1992) Venture Press; ISBN: 0900102853

A recent reviewer wrote:

I only recently came across this book and am sad because I could have done with it when I was training as a Psychotherapist. It's a tremendously well researched and documented book about the role of women in the provision and delivery of mental health services.

I heartily recommend it for anyone in the profession or studying to become a practitioner, it really helps identify many historical and current perspectives and is as relevant today as when it was published ten years ago.

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Also a good read:

Relationship Fundraising by Ken Burnett, published 2002 by Jossey Bass Wiley - of which a recent reviewer said:

For more than 10 years Ken Burnett has been promoting the concept of relationship fundraising. There can be few in the not-for-profit sector who have not heard of the characteristic approaches and fewer not actually embracing them for, like motherhood and apple pie, they are hard to criticise. In fact only one person I know opposes the whole idea and that is Richard Radcliffe of Smee and Ford, who after organising 500 donor focus groups says that he is convinced that a relationship is the last thing that charity supporters actually want. However that argument is for another day.

Meanwhile the rest of the fundraising world visits and revisits Ken’s periodic updates. The first edition came out in 1992 and a follow-up: “Friends for Life; Relationship Fundraising in Practice” in 1996. This completely updated and revised 2nd edition of the original continues to thump the drum, very effectively, for fundraisers to think very hard about their communications strategies and fundraising programmes.

What is perhaps surprising is that this is the only area with which I have significant problems was in the sometimes loose use of marketing terminology and concepts, For the rest Ken reminds us, colourfully and powerfully with plenty of first hand experiences, of the vital nature of our dialogue with donors and potential supporters. His use of “donor profiles” at the end of each chapter to help illustrate the points made are humorous and timely composites that every experienced fundraiser will, all too easily, recognise.

Much of the book draws, inevitably, on Ken Burnett’s personal experiences of donor development through the use of direct marketing programmes and contains excellent advice and case studies. He, for example, in chapter ten illustrates graphically the appropriate use of telephone fundraising and well timed letters that actually say something. This is all good stuff for the development of existing donors. However in chapter twelve he somewhat contradicts this earlier sound advise by suggesting that non-profits should be targeting groups of potential legators who are outside the existing supporter development programme. Whilst important, I personally feel that, charities need to work very much more effectively with their existing networks of supporters, their families and friends. But this is again a very small aspect in what is otherwise a very good read.

Fundraisers and Marketeers in the not-for-profit world will find it a valuable, timely read or re-read since the updates for change and the 21st Century make it particularly useful in reminding us of what needs to be done. And, perhaps even more important, what needs to be avoided. Ken’s closing quote from Anita Roddick is typical of the neat, appropriate use of experience. He says that if, as a mere fundraiser in your organisation, you feel like you cannot make a difference just remember: “If you think you’re too small to make a difference…. you’ve never spent a night alone in a room with a mosquito.”

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