Blogs Archives - Page 2 of 5 - The Management Centre

Halloween special: The most frightening word in fundraising

In this halloween blog, Bernard Ross, =mc Director gets right to the heart of what fundraisers fear the most… In Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness, the ‘hero’ Kurtz finally confronts his own demons. His final words? “the horror, the horror”. (Note carefully introduced pretentious reference and avoidance of plot spoiler.) As Halloween approaches I […]

How to handle your worries about change

Help! It’s all changing! Hardly a week seems to go by these days without someone asking me about change and how to manage change at work. The world is changing, our sector is changing and our jobs are changing. Whether you’re a manager driving change in your organisation, or a member of staff implementing change, […]

Problems with Presenting? Get a grip!

In this blog, =mc Assistant Director and L&D consultant Yvette Gyles shares three top tips for giving memorable, impactful presentations that you can enjoy, rather than dread

Management is for softies – but it gets solid results: Bob’s story

When we put together management training, we like to involve potential participants in the design. This co-creation approach has some real benefits – participants are engaged early on, and we can understand exactly what their management challenges are and ensure the training is tailored to meet their needs. We also find out what their teams […]

Leave me alone! How do I know I’m making progress when my to-do list just won’t go away?

Whether you are a fan of the ‘to-do’ notepad, post-it piles, scrap paper, a bullet journal, or =mc’s Action Sheets – sometimes even looking at the number of things that need to be done can be utterly overwhelming. And make you hate the list that itself seems to be nagging at you. When you’re up […]

19 years after NAFS – is the learning still useful?

In this guest blog, National Arts Fundraising School alumna Fiona Mason, now a freelance writer, arts consultant and Development Manager for Pacitti Company, shares her story since attending the School. It’s a bright, crisp November day in 1998 when I arrive at the country house hotel outside Bath, Gloucestershire, for the National Arts Fundraising School […]

Stop ‘asking donors for money’ right now!

=mc Director Bernard Ross bucks against the latest fundraising trend… and with good reason. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been transported back into the arts and culture world of the 1970s. To be honest it’s not all bad. I mean I could live with the bad hair, the purple nylon velour loon pants, and even […]

Creating the Fundraising Ninjas at Northern Broadsides

In this guest blog, Kay Burnett, Creative Projects Development Manager at Northern Broadsides shares her experience on the National Arts Fundraising School. Right – Kay Burnett on NAFS 2017 Working for a company that has a small core of four full time staff means that we all wear many different hats. So, when the issue of […]

The appraisal is dead. Long live the appraisal.

=mc Assistant Director and L&D specialist Yvette Gyles blogs on the pros and cons of appraisals… A few weeks ago I was having dinner with a number of ex-colleagues, all in HR and working in the City in various commercial and professional services companies. Ever one to take advantage of a situation, I seized the […]

Managing Project Stakeholders

Help! I need to manage my stakeholders and I don’t know where to start. As a project manager it’s important to know and understand who your stakeholders are and how to manage your relationships with them. People can make or break a project so handling your stakeholders well is essential. At =mc we define stakeholders […]

Crowdfunding, Gift Horses and their Dental Work

I was recently sent an interesting report on crowdfunding by a participant on the National Arts Fundraising School – and specifically a scheme that’s been successfully run in Plymouth. At first the results look really impressive – and the follow up up report reinforces this. But after an interesting debate at the school I decided […]

Fundraising Adventures – Arts to Education

Guest blog: Caroline Notman, Director of Development & Alumni Relations, St. Aloysius’ College The National Arts Fundraising School will be in it’s 30th year come 2018, having trained over 1,300 fundraisers helping them to raise £300M+ for their organisations. One of the most rewarding parts of running the School is hearing from past Alumni, how […]

What skills do I need to be a good project manager?

In this blog =mc‘s Learning & Development Consultant Laura Slater shares practical tips on how to become an outstanding project manager, and introduces the highly effective =mc Systems Model. What skills do I need to be a good project manager?

Do you need to influence someone? Get on the same page

What’s the Big Idea? If you want to have a good relationship with your colleagues, managers and leaders at work, the best thing to do is to perform your job well. But there will be times when you need to actively influence someone – to get help or resources, to get buy-in for your ideas, […]

Legacies: an untapped income stream for UK arts organisations?

In this guest blog, Meg Abdy, Director at Legacy Foresight shares insights on legacy fundraising for arts organisations. Legacy Foresight and Arts Quarter LLP recently teamed up to research legacy fundraising in the UK arts community, building on previous surveys in 2010 and 2012. We looked to explore current levels of investment in legacy fundraising – both […]

So you think you’re clever? Three things you can learn from email scammers

As fundraisers we often think we’re very clever – using sophisticated techniques from marketing, from neuroscience and from psychology to share and organise our powerful and engaging messages. When we’re feeling down about our low response rates – clearly the failing of our unsophisticated audience – we can always go into our spam folders to […]

Valentine’s Day? Donor love? Be over it…!

=mc Director Bernard Ross blogs on which charities are deserving all the love, and which are pushing donors away this Valentine’s Day. I hate Valentine’s Day. I mean I can live with the schmaltzy overpriced commercial nonsense: genetically modified, scentless roses at £5 a stem, cards that range from diabetes-causing sweetness to jaw-dropping crudeness, and opportunities to […]

Need an energy boost? Check your batteries

Do you feel like you aren’t working at full power? Then take these two steps to boost your energy… 1. Get focus To boost your energy you need to focus on the right things for you. One way to think about this is to consider whether you are working at full power in each of […]

Whose job is it anyway? Accountability in learning

Just who is responsible for learning in organisations, and for learning transfer after training programmes? Yvette Gyles, =mc Assistant Director, explores the role of accountability in learning. Many of our customers ask us to ensure the training we deliver encourages personal responsibility for learning – but exactly what they mean by that is not always clear. Learning […]

You step up – I’ll step back: the coaching approach to becoming a leader

=mc Director Laura Slater blogs on a the benefits of using the ‘coach approach’ with your teams. Here at =mc we know that stepping into leadership is a big deal. As you become more senior in an organisation, an exciting aspect of moving up is being able to actually set the direction for your team or department […]

Presentation skills 101 – feel the fear and do it anyway

In September 2016 Ruth Jobling, Research Advisor at The Brooke, was a participant at their bespoke introductory day on Presentation Skills, run by =mc. For Ruth it was very much ‘just in time’ training – she was booked to put her learning into practise in front of a large audience at an international conference the following […]

7 Top tips for managing at a distance

Managing an ‘invisible’ team of people – who don’t sit anywhere near you and may not even be in the same time zone – can be a huge challenge. How do you make sure out of sight isn’t out of mind? Yvette Gyles, Assistant Director of =mc, looks at how to manage effectively at a […]

5 ways to stay calm and carry on

Bad day? How to control your responses, and not let your emotions control you. We’ve all had bad days – and bad interactions with other people. You know the ones – where you feel the prickle of anger or upset, surges of frustration or even crushing levels of disappointment. These sometimes overwhelming feelings are the […]

A journey through film and fundraising

This guest blog is written by National Arts Fundraising School Alumna Deborah Parker, Chief Executive Officer at Cinema For All. We caught up with Deborah at a recent Alumni event and asked her to share her story since attending the School seven years ago: In 2009 I was working for one of the old Regional Screen Agencies in Manchester […]

What type of procrastinator are you?

We all procrastinate on occasion. But do you ever miss a deadline because you put things off for just a bit too long? Or delay starting on something and then have to rush to get it done, compromising on quality? Or miss an opportunity because you didn’t act earlier? If any of this sounds like […]

Leading and Managing Change

Lead a change process with confidence Managing change is one of the most challenging activities anyone can take on – whether as a senior manager, a team leader, or an HR professional. This intensive 1-2 day programme shares =mc’s practical consulting experience helping a wide range of large and small agencies to develop effective change […]

I’m the boss now! Top tips for new managers to make a successful transition into management

Moving into your first role as a new manager is a big deal. In fact, it’s probably the biggest step you can take in your career. Once you’re on the management ladder, climbing it gets easier with time and practice. But the first step is fraught with challenges and difficulty. Building on last year’s Emerging thoughts […]

Change and the leadership challenge in housing

Social housing needs skilled managers and strong leadership to lead others through change and protect its social purpose. Housing associations have a core social purpose – to support those in need, ensuring strong communities and to do so in a way that empowers individuals to lead healthy, happy, and secure lives. However, we know from […]

Where to focus in arts fundraising: Start, Stop, Consider

Last month 29 arts and culture fundraisers came together for the intensive, immersive – and hugely enjoyable – experience that is the National Arts Fundraising School. Three days into the 6-day programme, we asked them to reflect on three clusters of action: things they wanted to start doing things they wanted to stop doing things they wanted to consider further We’ve […]

10 ways to increase donations through your website

Behavioural Economics is changing our understanding of how people make decisions. While we like to think we are rationale, considered beings, the majority of our daily decisions are made quickly and often irrationally. This has huge implications for us as fundraisers, not least in the way we engage with donors making ‘impulse’ or ‘spur of the […]

5 energisers for team meetings and away days

In the blog below, Learning & Development Consultant Philly Graham shares 5 practical energisers to help bring teams together. Before you read on… if you’re fed up of enforced fun with no clear output from your standard summer away-day we want to hear from you. =mc‘s tailor made away-days for teams are more fun, more […]

The MENA Blogs Part 1 – Better Together?

This blog post is the first in a series of posts from =mc’s Senior Associate Consultant Laurence Brady, who is currently undertaking an exciting piece of fundraising work in the Middle East and North Africa. During his time on the project, Laurence will be writing regular blog posts in a series called ‘The MENA Blogs’. […]

Action Learning Sets: making behaviour change stick

How often do you send your staff on training programmes only to discover that down the line, nothing really seems to have improved or changed, either in skill, practice or results? While you might be able to claim back the money for the course – you’ll never be able to get back the two or […]

The MENA Blogs Part 7 – If

This blog post is the seventh in a series of posts from =mc’s Senior Associate Consultant Laurence Brady, who is currently undertaking an exciting piece of fundraising work in the Middle East and North Africa. During his time on the project, Laurence will be writing regular blog posts in a series called ‘The MENA Blogs’. […]

The MENA Blogs Part 8 – The view from the citadel

This blog post is the eighth in a series of posts from =mc’s Senior Associate Consultant Laurence Brady, who is currently undertaking an exciting piece of fundraising work in the Middle East and North Africa. During his time on the project, Laurence will be writing regular blog posts in a series called ‘The MENA Blogs’. […]

How do we Secure Unrestricted Income to Deliver on our Mission?

Today Wednesday (18th) The Management Centre will be hosting a thought leadership event in Geneva with a number of senior INGO and UN agency leaders to address the question: How do we secure unrestricted income to deliver on our mission? Among the agencies represented will be The Global Fund, UNICEF, UNHCR, WWF, International Diabetes Federation […]

Being new – 5 things you need to do

I started my new job as a consultant at =mc today. And one of the first things they asked me to do was to write a blog… So I decided that I needed to learn from my past experience of changing jobs. After all I have done this before First I noticed there are two […]

Thinking Big – and Unrestricted

=mc held a thought leadership seminar in Geneva two weeks ago to discuss a major concern among all INGOs and UN Agencies: how to raise unrestricted income, especially now with governmental funds reducing. Participants included senior figures from a number of key agencies including UNHCR, International HIV/AIDS Alliance, WWF, CARE International, IFRC, International Diabetes Federation, […]

Using Strategic Planning Tools for Fundraising

Is your organisation competing in a Red Ocean or Blue Ocean? Put simply, Red Ocean & Blue Ocean are two different ways of comparing the strategy of an organisation in relation to the territory they are competing in. Red Ocean Strategy sees an organisation fighting for a share of the demand in a market which […]

The MENA Blogs Part 2 – Birds of the Revolution

This blog post is the second in a series of posts from =mc’s Senior Associate Consultant Laurence Brady, who is currently undertaking an exciting piece of fundraising work in the Middle East and North Africa. During his time on the project, Laurence will be writing regular blog posts in a series called ‘The MENA Blogs’. […]

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