There’s no shortage of advice in the fundraising sector (whether in blogs, conferences or other channels) on how to achieve big things – such as how to build massive mobile-driven campaigns, how to tell stories via a range of integrated channels or how to come up with big, game-changing creative ideas.

Whilst this advice is useful for a select range of charities, our experience suggests that many charities running DM fundraising programmes have much more basic and urgent needs than these.

For example, gaining good quality case studies and stories can often be a problem within charities, and these are utterly essential ingredients in an effective fundraising campaign.  Persuading charities to spend time producing clear results sheets and then examining these properly at the start and end of campaigns can also be difficult – yet this, again, is absolutely critical if they are to get the best out of their fundraising.

There are plenty more issues like these – seemingly basic, yet utterly essential -that fundraisers need to discuss and support each other on, yet they are not being covered enough in sector forums.  And, in our experience, these issues aren’t confined to small-to-medium sized charities.

So – we suggest there’s a real need to get back to basics in the fundraising sector in the advice we both give each other and seek from each other.  Let’s not be ashamed to ask for advice about basic stuff, and let’s offer advice on these things – as these are the real essentials of good fundraising, even if they might not be as sexy as some other issues!