Kind leadership and fundraiser wellbeing - with Graham Allcott

So Katie, before we hear from Graham and find out from him what makes someone a kind leader, let's chat a bit more about this time of year, September to December, crunch time.

It really can be such a hectic time of year for fundraisers, can't it? Christmas is just around the corner and the pressure's on.

Absolutely.

I mean, for many charities, the Christmas campaign can be the biggest and most important source of income in the entire year.

And although we're calling it the Christmas campaign, people have been working on this for months and it's critically important.

And the thing that we all know about fundraisers is how much they care, right? They work too many hours because they care.

They worry about meeting the target because they care.

They worry about their supporters because they care.

And this puts a huge amount of pressure on fundraisers because they want to do the absolute best that they can for the cause that they care about so much.

So huge time of year.

Absolutely.

And that pressure comes in all shapes and sizes, doesn't it? As you say, it comes from the fact that they care and they want to do the best they can possibly do for the charity and for the people that charity supports or the cause that charity supports.

But with all that pressure, which could also come, of course, with targets and all those kind of things, how can that pressure sort of manifest itself negatively? Are we talking about fundraisers feeling increased stress at this time of year or exhaustion? How does it kind of manifest itself?

Absolutely.

It can have a real impact on well-being, physical and mental health.

Because if all that pressure to raise the money, the extra hours that they're putting in, pressure from other parts of the organisation, because it is such a critical source of income.

And the fundraisers are the people who end up feeling that pressure and the toll it takes on them personally can be quite big.

Absolutely.

And do you think that senior leadership teams are perhaps always aware of that pressure? Is this something that they should be more aware of in terms of the demands that are being placed on their fundraising teams at this time of year to ultimately make sure that those appeals are a success, that every raffle ticket is sold and that every opportunity is taken? Do you think SLTs need to do more or do you think they perhaps aren't aware of what the pressure looks like at the coalface?

I think that the answer to that all depends entirely on the organisation.

You hope that SLTs do understand it, but we know that a lot of senior leaders don't actually understand fundraising at all, and therefore they don't understand what's their fundraisers are experiencing and as a result they're maybe not putting the support in but they're also maybe piling the pressure on but at the same time let's remember senior leaders are people too and they have their own pressures that they're under that maybe their teams aren't aware of and and they are possibly feeling all of that pressure and stress themselves But the best organizations are when leaders do invest in well-being and do make sure that their staff are supported.

And fundamentally, that improves the bottom line.

If your fundraisers are supported, they'll do a better job and they'll bring more money in.

So being kind and being a good leader isn't just about being nice.

It's also about doing what's best for the organization, I think.