While 2020 demonstrates just how unpredictable life can be, the fundraising community has gained considerable experience over the past year of fundraising in this ‘new normal’. EFA, the European Fundraising Association, of which the FAB is a member, rounds up sector experts’ predictions for fundraising in 2021.
Our vice-president Ilja De Coster's prediction:
Ilja De Coster, senior fundraising & data strategist and vice-president of the Fundraisers Alliance Belgium, questions whether fundraisers will act on and embed learnings from the pandemic in their programmes, bolstering reserves and building donor retention or whether we’ll see a return to old ways.
"Predicting the future was never so hard. It can go in two directions. The optimist in me anticipates that fundraisers did learn from the crisis, did fine tune their fundraising techniques, strengthen their financial reserves to cover future crises and will from now on really focus on donor relations and retention. The pessimist in me predicts a return to business as usual, nothing learned and keeping the same old human arrogance of untouchability. Just waiting till the next crisis will hit us again."
"My main hope, after this period with a lack of real human interaction, is we will not just simplistically fully embrace online as a surrogate, but will find a clever combo of online and offline, re-emphasising the value of real human contact in fundraising."
Read into the EFA-feature 'Looking into the crystal ball: Fundraising in 2021' with predictions by fundraising experts all over Europe.
