In the year when CASE celebrates its 50th anniversary and CASE Europe its 30th, Joanna Motion reflects on the flagship CASE Spring Institute in Educational Fundraising. She looks back at SIEF through a double lens – from a CASE perspective, as one of the Institute’s creators; and through More Partnership eyes, considering the ripples SIEF has since sent across the philanthropic landscape. Earlier this month, the current chair of the Spring Institute, Emily Robin, hosted a networking event at London Business School for SIEF alumni, supported by More Partnership. This blog post is an expanded version of Joanna’s remarks on that occasion.

The Spring Institute was a baby for the new Millennium. In 2000, when I joined the staff of CASE, the question I encountered everywhere was: Where do we get the workforce?

The context was one of optimism and ambition. Universities all over the UK and Ireland – plus a selection from the rest of Europe – had started to believe that a renaissance in philanthropy for education was not only possible but practicable on our side of the Atlantic. They looked to North America – and more specifically to CASE – for inspiration and for transferable expertise. As Vice-Chancellors readied themselves to invest in development and alumni offices, a significant risk factor, however, was the paucity of professional staff – people who combined an aptitude for fundraising with an understanding of the complexities of the educational environment and an instinct for cultural sensitivities. [Note: for an account of this evolution, see William Squire’s invaluable University Fundraising in Britain – a Transatlantic Partnership, 2014.]

The second most frequent comment I heard was: This isn’t America you know…

In the late 1980s and early 90s, a trickle of non-North American pioneers started to enroll at CASE’s celebrated Summer Institute in Educational Fundraising (SIEFR) held each July at Dartmouth College. I’d made the pilgrimage myself from the University of Melbourne in 1988, returning to the office with a binder of material so fat that it needed a suitcase of its own. Something of that sort was urgently needed in the UK. But how to make it happen – and to do that well and do it rapidly?

Twenty-two years later, I’m amazed at how fast the project accelerated, what a distinct character the Institute developed and how much impact SIEF made so soon. Looking back, I see three morals to this story: 

• The satisfaction of teamwork;

• The galvanizing power of philanthropy;

• The magic of the multiplier effect.

 Faculty and CASE staff at the inaugural Spring Institute, Durham University 2002

The teamwork
At the turn of the century, there was an invigorating sense of urgency in the ether. And also of adventure and shared ownership. If a step-change in fundraising professionalism in Europe was going to happen, a legion of champions would be required, working together and pooling ideas and networks. A rising tide lifts all boats, I went around saying – but it needed all available hands to get in those boats and row. 

Around the table in CASE Europe’s windowless meeting room in Tavistock Square for the steering committee discussions that shaped the infant SIEF were energetic and committed practitioners. They included Caroline Underwood, Development Director at the London Institute (who went on to found the Philanthropy Company), Sue Cunningham, then Director of Development at Christ Church, Oxford (and now of course CASE President) and Simon Pennington, then Director of Development at UCL and now my colleague at More Partnership. (More on the SIEF-More connection below.)

It was Simon who called me one day to say: there’s someone I think you should meet…

Enter the galvanizing power of philanthropy
That someone was Michael Gwinnell (who sadly died last year). Michael was the London representative of Chuck Feeney’s fabled Atlantic Philanthropies. AP was looking for ways to fire up university fundraising and we were there with a cunning plan but straitened resources. It’s a brilliant example of what philanthropy can enable. Sooner or later, there would have been a Spring Institute even without AP, but their generous investment through an initial three-year grant meant that it happened with bells on, faster, better and more sustainably.

An indispensable figure in the delivery of the programme was the inaugural chair. Jo Agnew was Director of the University of Oxford’s North America office when SIEF launched (previously Director of Development at King’s College London and later Chief Advancement Officer at her alma mater, the University of Western Australia). Jo had the highest expectations of herself and everyone involved in SIEF. She also fostered a camaraderie among the faculty that created lasting bonds of shared responsibility, friendship and resilience – a useful inheritance when SIEF had to weather unexpected storms, whether the Icelandic volcano in 2010, marooning half the faculty outside the UK, or the Covid years driving the course online.

The SIEF approach was to raise sights while keeping feet on the ground: ambition plus reality. Initially that meant identifying outstanding North American presenters for the faculty and pairing them with local practitioners who had a shrewd grasp of what works in a European context. Enter the legends. How astonishing, looking back, that such stars as Bill McGoldrick (Washburn & McGoldrick), Fritz Schroeder (Johns Hopkins), Lorna Somers (McMaster University then, now Mohawk College), the late Henry Drucker (the academic-turned-fundraising guru who steered the inaugural Campaign for Oxford) gave the nascent project weeks and weeks of their inspirational skills. Not just their skills but their availability 24/7 for the duration of the Institute, their creativity and their good humour. And the local heroes were, well, heroic. Brave, diligent, resourceful. It became, I believe, a real badge of honour to serve on the SIEF faculty. And how lucky were we to have had in the line up in the early years such practitioners as: Nick Blinco (now of the University of Melbourne), Aine Gibbons (now at RCSI), Andrea Nixon (Tate), and Gemma Peters (now CEO of Macmillan Cancer Support)?

Take the work seriously but don’t take yourselves too seriously was the expectation that these pioneers set. Hence a series of SIEF highlights ranging from getting into costume as monks and wenches at Lumley Castle to fast-track the fundamentals of fundraising (with scripts from writers including Sue Cunningham and Martin Kaufman, then of the Museum of London) to viral videos of carpool karaoke (take a bow, Bob Burdenski). If you were there, you won’t have forgotten!

Both at its initial home at Durham University and in the subsequent Loughborough years, SIEF was an exhilarating and joyous experience for many. It was challenging: “the project” with its swift dive into teamwork and public presentation is scarily lifelike. And intense: so much to learn, so little time. It was designed as a course, not a conference, following a carefully researched and structured curriculum, rather than pick-n-mix. We recognised that the students might graduate into roles managing functions in advancement disciplines they had not themselves practised. Therefore, everyone needed a grasp of regular giving and legacy fundraising, campaigns and special projects. And absolutely everyone needed to develop what we termed “ethical intelligence” through case studies that provoked debate for days.

The Institute evolved and adapted and strengthened over time. It generated spin-offs. Just as SIEF drew inspiration from SIEFR, so it became the launching point in 2010 for the Asia-Pacific Institute in Educational Fundraising (APIEF) in Victoria, Australia. There were parallel initiatives for a CASE Europe Alumni Relations Institute and also a Strategic Marketing Institute, carrying over a similar ethos of energy and aspiration and shared endeavour. The SIEF experience was enhanced by several cohorts of students from African universities supported by the Carnegie Corporation. When CASE Europe won substantial funding from the Higher Education Funding Council from 2008-2012, in the context of the government Matched Funding Scheme for universities, that enabled the arrival of the stellar CASE Graduate Trainees plus a raft of further SIEF scholarships spread across the sector.

SIEF faculty members from the early years who went on to become More partners, left to right Adrian Beney, Simon Pennington, Ian Edwards and Catrin Tilley.

The magic of the multiplier effect
What’s happened to those 23-and-counting generations of SIEF students? That’s where the magic of the multiplier effect kicks in. SIEF quickly established itself as an excellent line to flourish on a CV, as we found in the research for the Pearce Report in 2012 and its follow up report on the fundraising workforce in 2014. Although too many names have slipped off CASE’s radar, alas, we know that SIEF alumni are doing the core work across many advancement specialisms in offices great and small, home and away. To look through the list of attendees is to salute and smile at name after name. This is horribly invidious but if I’m pushed to highlight individuals, standouts for me include: Kate Bond (Chief Advancement Officer at Trinity College Dublin), Dominic Boyd (Director of Development & Alumni Relations at Manchester Metropolitan University), Delia De Vreeze (Director of University Relations & Fundraising at VU Amsterdam), Pia Dolivo (Head of Community Relations & Fundraising at the University of Helsinki), Victor Dugga (Professor at the Federal University of Lafia), Mary Haworth (Director of Philanthropy & Alumni at the University of York), Oonagh Kane (Senior Director of Advancement, Principal Gifts, at the University of Melbourne), Frewyeni Kidane (Advancement Director of the Rhodes Trust Foundation), Kathryn Marten (Chief Development Officer at the National Theatre), Anh Ngyuen (Director of Development at the National Gallery), Rossie Ogilvie (VP Advancement at the University of Sydney), Ben Plummer-Powell (LSE’s Chief Philanthropy & Global Engagement Officer), Amanda Scott (Executive Director, Latymer Foundation), Monica Stanciu (Director of Advancement at the International School of Prague). Make us proud, the faculty said as they farewelled each cadre of students. And they absolutely have. Deep curtsies for what these outstanding practitioners and all their classmates do and enable.

Earlier this month, in the lofty atrium at London Business School,  SIEF alumni reminisced and considered the challenges of the future of philanthropy as outlined in Accelerating Ambitions, the CASE-More Report.   Overhead, there hovered many invisible and overlapping professional family trees. One talent sparks another. An example: back at SIEFR in 1988, faculty member Dave Dunlop, the supernova of relationship fundraising at Cornell University, impressed a wide-eyed Lorna Somers, just starting on her advancement career, with his gracious and gentle approach to principal gifts. Sixteen years later, it was Lorna on the podium at SIEF, firing up the class of 2004, including a young man from Birkbeck, University of London, who thought, maybe this could really be my life’s work. That was Adrian Punaks, who went on to chair the Institute himself as Executive Director of Development at UCL before becoming a partner with More. Who knows which future stars will take up the challenge from Adrian and pass it on in their turn? Happily, the beat goes on.

SIEF-More synergies 
I’ve mentioned two More Partnership colleagues, Adrian Punaks and Simon Pennington, who have played important roles in the SIEF story. But the number of More colleagues sharing in the SIEF experience is striking. SIEF graduates among More consultants include Flo Bill, Helen Geary, Katrina Hancock, David Mungall, Dave Shepherd and Maarten Vervaat. Then there are the colleagues who joined More having learned their craft as front-line practitioners and polished their skillset as SIEF faculty members along the way: from the early years, Adrian Beney (ex-Durham University), Ian Edwards (ex-INSEAD), Rachel Hall (ex-UCL) and Catrin Tilley (ex-National Galleries of Scotland); latterly Liz Reilly (ex-University of Edinburgh) following Adrian Punaks as chair of the Institute. Plus from sister Institutes, Nik Miller (ex-University of York), Siôn Lutley (ex-University of Melbourne) and Dave Shepherd (ex-UWCSEA). It’s an intriguing concentration. A passion for education is deeply embedded in More’s practice and client list, of course. But is there congruence too between the SIEF ethos and More’s? We’re all of us advancing great ambitions. More’s values – challenging ourselves, going beyond, keeping it real and bringing the joy – surely reverberate through the Spring Institute also.

Let’s give the last word here to SIEF alumni. Back at the beginning, Atlantic Philanthropies commissioned an independent evaluation of the inaugural institute. Participants were asked, among much other feedback, to identify key benefits of the course. These are the quotes the evaluation pulled out:

• Access to experienced, personable practitioners for a continued length of time.

• Gained tremendous insight to logical approach to fundraising development.

• Being fired up! The course demonstrated how excellent a cause we are defending and that we need to inspire our donors.

• It has given me inspiration and enthusiasm for my work and made me feel that I belong to a worthwhile profession.

• Reassurance that this is a profession I want to be part of – not just because of what we do but also the people with whom we do it.

Here’s to the cause we serve, the profession we’re part of and the people we’re alongside.

Jo Agnew and Joanna Motion, Durham 2002, happy to have accomplished one of the intensest weeks of their careers.

 

Feeling inspired?
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About the author
Joanna Motion has been part of a record 18 CASE Spring Institutes. She became a partner at More Partnership in 2011, having served a decade with CASE including as inaugural vice president of CASE international operations.

Joanna oversaw the growth of CASE’s activities outside North America, including the creation of CASE Asia-Pacific, and played a key role in encouraging government support for educational advancement in the United Kingdom and on the continent and in securing grant support for programming in East and West Africa.

Joanna is a CASE Crystal Apple Winner, holder of the CASE Europe Distinguished Service Award and a CASE Laureate.