LAST WEEK OF OUR SUMMER SALE!
Use code TRAINING10 to get 10% off our virtual training courses*.
Offer ends 31 July, don't miss out - View CIOF training courses here
*Excludes leadership programmes, on-demand, webinars, qualifications and in-person training courses.
Philanthropy is at a turning point, and this month's Let's Talk Fundraising sets out to explore exactly what that means for fundraisers.
Host Tim Beynon is joined once again by Charlotte Sherman, policy manager at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising and lead on its Philanthropy 2035 project, for a conversation with Rory Brooks CBE, board member at the Charity Commission and one of the sector's most experienced philanthropists.
Charlotte opened the episode with some context. Research from Barclays and the Beacon Collaborative found that high-net-worth giving reached £11.3 billion in 2024, up from £8.3 billion in 2020, a rise she says shows real generosity despite the cost-of-living and cost of giving pressures charities have faced since the pandemic.
Charlotte pointed to several forces reshaping major giving: the intergenerational transfer of wealth bringing in younger philanthropists, technology changing how donors research causes, the growing role of professional advisers and donor advised funds, the emergence of the “impact economy”, and renewed government interest through initiatives such as the Department for Culture, Media and Sport's place-based giving programme.
Rory has spent close to two decades thinking about philanthropy from every angle. He and his wife Elizabeth established their family foundation in 2005, focusing on social disadvantage, education and the arts, and he has chaired the philanthropic board of Manchester University, sat on the donor panel of the Pears Review into philanthropy and higher education, and now sits on the board of the Charity Commission for England and Wales, giving him what Tim called “a rare vantage point on giving from major donor to regulator.”
Asked what's changed most in how major donors give, Rory pointed first to visibility. “Philanthropy generally is becoming more visible,” he said, describing it as “one of the great quiet assets of our country” that has traditionally been “a very fragmented, slightly incoherent universe of people who are all trying to do good things.”
Rory credited growing government engagement with giving philanthropy “a voice with a bit more coherence,” and noted that the pandemic prompted real rethinking among grant makers about their priorities and rate of distribution.
On the impact economy, Rory described it as “fundamentally about looking at ways of investing which disaggregate the nature of returns”, combining financial and social return in different formats. He was frank that the space is “still somewhat emerging” but welcomed government's growing focus on public benefit activities that align with its own missions.
Storytelling emerged as a strong theme. Rory and his wife Elizabeth are backing a project researched by Rhodri Davies collecting around twenty philanthropy stories from all four nations of the UK, due to launch in October as an open access site.
“There's a golden thread that runs through this,” Rory said. “A sense of moral purpose... From the smallest action, helping somebody across the street, making that phone call to a friend, to Bill Gates who's trying to rid the world of disease, it's the same fundamental underlying purpose, which is you want to make the world just a little bit better.”
He was sympathetic to charities' reluctance to ask high-net-worth individuals to share their stories, suggesting the sector is “getting a little less shy” and increasingly “reframing the conversation through need and opportunity as opposed to through quantum of money.”
Charlotte added that the Charity Commission's public trust research shows fewer people now recall a charity story in the media, though those who do are more likely to come away with a positive view, underlining how much work remains to cut through a crowded news cycle.
One of the more topical exchanges concerned artificial intelligence. Rory noted a marked rise in AI-generated funding applications, which he said is “clogging the system a bit” and making it harder for grant makers to sort genuine, well-matched applications from AI-generated ones. “There's a lot of noise in the system,” he said, adding it will take time for the sector to find “the new normal.”
Charlotte, who is currently writing the CIOF’s AI guidance, compared AI to a hammer: “You can use a hammer to build a bookshelf, but if you don't know how to build the bookshelf properly, it really doesn't matter what kind of hammer you use.” Used well, she argued, AI won't replace good fundraisers, it will make them better at their jobs.
Rory was clear that good governance underpins donor confidence. “If you have doubts and distrust... are you going to give the money?” he asked, drawing on his own background as a lending banker. He encouraged charities to be open about setbacks as well as successes: “Good news should travel fast and bad news should travel a bit faster.”
On the biggest mistakes charities make when approaching major donors, his advice was to take time to understand a donor's own missions and motivations before asking, so the conversation doesn't head down “a route which is obviously negative for the donor,” wasting time on both sides.
Rory's ambition for the next decade is captured in what he called his strapline: “more and better philanthropy.” That means engaging a broader base of donors rather than relying on a narrow group of major givers, building a smoother relationship between philanthropy and government, and making giving a normal, less intimidating part of national conversation. “It's still not as familiar as it needs to be,” he said, “and it needs to be more accepted.”
His closing advice to fundraisers building long term relationships with major donors was simple: don't chase a single gift, build a programme.
Make fundraising “a whole institution project” understood and supported from trustees to volunteers, so that the task doesn't rest on one person's shoulders. As he put it, if fundraising is properly integrated across an organisation, “it'll make the fundraiser's job a lot easier.”
Charlotte summed up the mood of the conversation neatly: the sector, she said, is in a strong position, and the challenge now is “better giving and even better fundraising.”
This article was created using the support of AI, based on the transcript from the podcast. It has been reviewed, edited and approved by a member of CIOF staff.
