What?

The eFundraising Forum (EFF) brings together fundraising innovators, influencers and mavericks to connect and share strategies and best practices in digital fundraising. It is modelled on the successful annual eCampaigning Forum (ECF).

We are social learners: we all learn best by connecting and sharing with experienced peers. Thus every EFF participant must have relevant experience to be accepted. The agenda is self-organising small-group discussions. Participants find this methodology refreshing and rewarding, enables great learning and is excellent for connecting people and ideas.

Why?

• Learning with other experienced participants
  Current fundraising events tend to be large impersonal gatherings with a full agenda of speakers and a silent 'audience'. Organisations respond by sending their new staff to get 'trained' and their experienced staff to 'speak'.
  
  While the most interesting conversations are with experienced practitioners sitting beside us, actually connecting on topics of mutual interest is random and must be squeezed into breaks and lunches.
  
  Yet sustained success happens because experienced staff continually learn from peers and improve. To achieve this, an event organised on fundamentally different principles is required: one where all participants are experienced and they are the focus of the event, not the speakers.
• Digital fundraising is an opportunity
  The burning fundraising issues include:
  • external influences on when and why people give (eg. economy, politics)
  • increases in one off payments vs. decreasing monthly direct debits
  • competition, crowded market, new platforms
  • trends in communication and messaging
  • structural challenges within organisations
  • mobile (SMS, telemarketing, smart phones)
  While these aren't all digital issues, they all have digital elements to them and the ways forward often emerge from experienced fundraising discussing the issue and sharing their experiences.

Agenda