Sowing the seeds

Fundraising wisdom from the soil…

---

Did you know that as a paid subscriber to the Nest Egg, you have full access to our archive of articles?

They range from thought provoking to super practical.

Subscribing costs only £6 a month or £60 for the year – it’s the perfect gift for the fundraiser in your team looking to develop their understanding, their skills and their network.

We’d love to welcome you on board.

---

Sowing the seeds

Fundraising wisdom from the soil…

by Caroline Danks

Picture description: Caroline’s allotment in July 2023 - it’s very green, not many flowers out yet but there’s an impressive beanstalk

Just before Christmas 2021, after nearly two years on a waiting list, I was offered an allotment by our City Council.

We have only a small yard out the back of our house, relying on some gorgeous local parks and the South West Coast Path (only a 15 minute walk away) for time outdoors.  Frankly this suits me, as I always found lawn maintenance to be quite stressful.

Back in January 2022, as I started work on my new plot, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between gardening and fundraising.  So, here’s the updated version, with two full years of hindsight and experience thrown in for good measure.

Enjoy!

1.       It takes time

I had grand plans for my allotment.  They included:

• Multiple raised beds with a variety of crops

• A year-round harvest which I can share with friends and neighbours

• Fabulous soil which produces healthy, organic food

• Encouraging our children to get involved in the process

• Sowing a small amount of flowers to encourage pollinators (and cos they’re pretty)

• A patio, barbeque, hammock and yoga area

It’s incredibly tempting to rush off, start at an unsustainable pace, lose interest / momentum and end up with a sad cabbage and four stumpy carrots (or no carrots at all because wouldn’t you know, they’re quite hard to grow…).

I’m always working very hard to contain my excitement and not get ahead of myself. 

The priority back at the beginning of the journey was to ensure that when spring came, I had some beds in which to plant, a site clear of rubbish, usable compost bins and a water butt. 

Along with getting some help to put the infrastructure in place (thank you helpers!), my focus was on preparing the soil, digging it (a little)*, mixing in compost and manure so that my veggies have the best possible change of success.

*two years’ on, I’m a no dig / stock free gardener (for those of you who know and / or care what this means)

Without the foundations, nothing will grow.

Some examples of preparing the soil / creating a strong foundation for your fundraising:

• Research, of the in depth, detailed variety, repeated and built upon regularly will provide a full picture of the organisation / person from which you’re seeking funding.  Don’t scrimp on this important stage.

• Systems and processes, make sure your record keeping is designed for a time when your fundraising programme is more established, GDPR compliant and consistent across your organisation.

• Templates and tools, having a case for support which you’re confident in and into which colleagues have had input will provide a great starting point for new funding applications / proposals.  Make sure you have a bank of cover letters / outreach emails and thank you letters too!

And two years on?  Have those big dreams come to fruition you ask?

Well of course plans change, but here’s the progress report on the January 2022 vision:

• Multiple raised beds with a variety of crops – tick!

• A year-round harvest which I can share with friends and neighbours – tick (ish – the pigeons ate my purple sprouting broccoli so we’re down to 10 months harvest rather than 12…)

• Fabulous soil which produces healthy, organic food – tick!

• Encouraging our children to get involved in the process – after some initial interest, they became teenagers and therefore don’t care.

• Sowing a small amount of flowers to encourage pollinators (and cos they’re pretty) – screw this, we’re going BIG on the flowers!

• A patio, barbeque, hammock and yoga area – I have a patio.

2.       Variety!

In 2019, I grew a ton of kale and chard in my backyard. Having succeeded with these crops in the past, I felt they were a safe bet.

An infestation of cabbage white butterflies (who laid their eggs on my young plants, which turned into caterpillars which destroyed the LOT) put paid to these plans and instead I had to make do with a couple of handfuls of late-ripening tomatoes.

The fam were delighted as they really don’t like kale or chard.

In fundraising, especially where resources are limited, I would always lean towards focusing on what’s working and maximising your greatest opportunities to their fullest potential, before moving on to other (new) income streams.

However, a diverse range of sources through which you generate income will ultimately be more sustainable over time, so it makes sense to branch out as early as you can, even if you start small. 

Try this step by step exercise:

• Do an audit of your fundraising activity.

• Decide which of your existing streams of income could be doing better?  What would benefit from the fundraising equivalent of some top notch home made compost and a good watering with tomato feed?

• What are you new areas you’d like to explore?

• Why these things and not something else (make sure you’re breaking new ground for the right reasons)?

What small steps can you take to move just one of these new activities forwards in 2025?

3.       It’s bloody hard work

Here’s the ‘before’ picture, taken on Saturday morning.

Picture description: a bare allotment plot with a crappy shed and some dalek style compost bins.

And by Sunday afternoon….

Picture description: a pristine allotment plot with a thoughtful layout, weed minimising slabs / covers and a flashy greenhouse.

KIDDING!!!  This is my neighbour’s plot aka Plymouth’s answer to the Chelsea Flower Show.

Honestly, they showed up in a fully kitted out builders van and parked right up to where I was decanting my first attempt at homemade compost (I’d made a couple of errors and it was honking. I felt so bad!!!).

Embarassing.

Here’s my actual ‘after’ pic a couple of months later:

Picture description: a tidy-ish allotment, ready to go! 

•  7 beds dug

• 1 batch of compost mixed and spread

• 1 awful compost bin clearance situation (which we shall never speak of again but was the closest I’m likely ever to come to completing a bush tucker trial)

• 1 shed cleared - two tip runs

• Ton of weeding NAILED

• 1 water butt / guttering erected

• Paths laid

My back properly hurt, along with my shoulders and forearms - gardening activates muscles you never knew you had.

There are no shortcuts.  Fundraising, like gardening is hard work, especially at the beginning.  Put in the hours, put in the effort and you will be rewarded in time.

I stand by this point two years’ down the line but am at pains to express that the weeds did not disappear first time around. 

Tending the plot is not the hard graft it once was, but it’s still a lot of hard work.

4.       Go at YOUR pace

Back to my lovely neighbours, Rich and Jo who are experienced allotmenteers (and builders) and who have had a plot for many years.

They’ve created a beautiful space.

Although it’s hard, I am determined not to compare my three days’ digging and clearing with their many years of hard-won knowledge and hours of labour, experimentation and experience.

Comparing your charity’s first year of fundraising to another charity’s twentieth year is not a realistic expectation.

Make sure your projections align only with what’s relevant for you and your charity, knowing that the first time you host a running event (marketing it to your mum and the 100 people on your mailing list), it’s unlikely to generate ‘Race for Life’ style income.

Be confident about your journey.  Chat to others but be mindful of the point your peers and their charities are at in their fundraising journeys and take advice and feedback accordingly.  Their suggestions might be more reflective of their experience rather than yours.

Don’t feel bad / less than when you see huge charities shouting about their ‘£300 million fundraising campaign’ on social media.

Trust me, if you’ve been nurturing the soil for years and have a team of helpers willing to muck in whenever you need them too, it’s much easier to grow vegetables.

Incidentally, Rich and Jo couldn’t have been kinder.  They invited me to help myself to topsoil from their plot and suggested some ideas for veggies which have grown well for them in the past.  Rich sourced pallets for my compost bays and Jo gave me some spare seeds.

Awesome people.   

5.       Succession planting

Instead of sowing all your seeds at once, succession planting requires you to plant just a few seeds with a couple of weeks’ gap between each, giving you a steady supply of veggies (assuming no slugs etc – I think given all the rain we’ve had so far, 2024 is going to be a difficult one for managing slimy pests).

Early on, I was especially excited at the idea of fresh peas, eaten from the pod and having rows of them available throughout the summer months.

Succession planting helps to avoid a glut of veg and the waste that can potentially come as a result of having too much.

Whilst a glut of funding is never unwelcome, an absence of funding is very much a problem. 

Regular and predictable income is the ideal, so look at your workplans, funding deadlines and the expectations you have for each application / event / major gift prospect.

• When are you likely to secure funding during the year ahead (think months..)

• Where are the gaps?

• What can you do to fill these gaps?

Consider lead in times carefully, not only to manage your workload and wellbeing, but also to ensure you’re doing all you can to ensure an even spread of funding coming in throughout the year.

Honestly two years down the line, I’ve definitely not yet nailed succession planting.  The seed sowing season is very busy and both years I’ve found myself overwhelmed by May / June. 

For me, it’s about relaxing a bit, not overthinking and trying to keep the situation in perspective.

6.       Crop rotation

By planting different things in different places each year, you’ll grow stronger crops because of the goodness left in the soil by the previous plants.

The way I tenuously link this concept to fundraising is by inviting you to look at your fundraising toolkit, your written templates, your website and your database (and the reports you generate to help you to analyse your data).

These tools are the soil into which you plant your fundraising propositions.  The healthier the soil, the greater the yields.

Are you making best use of the work you’ve already done?  For example?

• Refreshing and revitalising content, proposals, letters and emails rather than starting from scratch?

• Sharing your best work with your team (ensuring there’s a shared file where you can all access past work) and across disciplines, for example, use a trust application as the starting point for a proposal to a major donor, take paragraphs from your successful corporate pitch and rework them for your website.

• Peer reviewing proposals with colleagues from other organisations - an external eye will help you to weed out (sorry!) jargon and simplify your writing.

Like gardening, fundraising takes time to develop, so it makes sense to improve existing resources (rather than creating new ones) wherever you can.

After a number of years (yes, years), you’ll have repeatable systems and processes and a garden full of riches from which you can take cuttings, further improve the soil (which was already good) and reap your bountiful harvest. 

All of this will enable you to do your best work, quicker.

p.s. do you have any hobbies which are typically associated with the older generation?

Or are you an older person who enjoys downhill skiing / parkour / white collar boxing?

Reply and tell us what you like do to chill out from your busy job.

---

Become a paid subscriber for £6 a month for weekly articles, access to our full archive of 50 plus articles and community features (comments and chats).