Street fundraising is a bona fide entry point for careers in wider charity fundraising

This is a guest blog written for us by Flow Caritas’ and supported by their “Fantastic Fundraising Survey” which is referenced in the article.

Outcomes of research:

Street fundraising:

* is a bona fide entry point for careers in wider charity fundraising, and should be promoted as such
* has brought in and developed a new generation of passionate, committed and skilful fundraisers, many of whom might have been lost to the charity sector
* has shown that former creatives and performing artistes have progressed further, on average, up the career ladder
* compared with 2013, so far 2014 has seen a:
~ 42% increase in applications to street fundraising roles
~ 68% increase in positions available
* 61% increase in ‘response to advert’ ratio

Streets Ahead Report

Why?

A key strategy of Flow Caritas’ is to position itself as a thought leader. In light of that, Flow Caritas developed the Streets Ahead career path report, which mapped the careers of street fundraisers, showing recruitment professionals in charity organisations that there is certainly plenty of talent out there.

Street fundraising has provided some of the best and brightest minds in wider charity fundraising. At least, this has been Flow’s experience, but was there any evidence to support this on a larger scale?

When?

In March 2014, Flow launched the research study to see if a promising career lies beyond the streets for some the sector’s most resilient members and whether recruiters would be able to spot the potential in these talented individuals. The Streets Ahead report was then launched in July 2014.

How?

The research took the form of a self-selecting 33-question online survey, followed by five in-depth questionnaires to, or interviews with, selected participants.

90 former street fundraisers completed the survey.

Results?

Leadership experience

As recruiters in this sector will know very well, managerial and leadership experience is vital in the climb up the charity ladder. 74% of participants were promoted to team leader, and 45.5% of these moved into an office-based role.

Senior roles

Street fundraising can also lead to senior roles within charities:

2% of our participants are now in managerial positions
8% are department heads, and
6% are heads or directors of fundraising

Motivation

We were pleasantly surprised however to learn that as many as 23.2% wanted to work for a charity and thought street fundraising would be a good entry point to their career. These findings are very interesting and show that recruitment professionals might wish to pay greater attention to those with this kind of experience.

Usefulness

On a similar thread, a clear majority (53%) of respondents found their street career very useful to their subsequent charity career, while only 12% rated it poorly.

Creative backgrounds

One interesting finding from the research was this – our star performers are those who began as a street fundraiser between jobs in the creative industries or performing arts.

Although comprising just 13.4% of respondents to the survey, 50% of the street fundraisers who had risen to become directors of fundraising were former creatives or artistes, as were over 25% of the heads of departments.

Fantastic Fundraising Survey

These interesting finding were supported by Flow Caritas’ Fantastic Fundraising Survey launched in November 2014. A total of 143 former or current face to face fundraisers completed the online survey.

Respondents’ current roles

When asked which sector respondents are currently working in, among their top answers were: