The Knowledge Hub: free expert training for your whole fundraising team

If you work in a small charity, chances are you wear many hats. Fundraiser, communications lead, finance support and database manager all rolled into one person, sometimes all before lunch. Finding time and budget for training can feel like a luxury you simply don't have.

That's exactly why the Knowledge Hub exists, and why it's worth a few minutes of your time today.

If your charity is an organisational member of CIOF, you and your whole team already have access to this library of on-demand video resources, at no extra cost. It's sitting there as part of your membership, ready to use whenever it suits you.

If your charity isn't an organisational member yet, take a look at the many benefits of membership.

If your charity has a voluntary income of less than £50,000 per year, organisational membership is free! 

What is the Knowledge Hub?

The Knowledge Hub is an accessible collection of expert-led video content covering some of the most relevant topics in fundraising today. It's available exclusively for CIOF Organisational members and the fundraisers who work there. 

Each topic is broken down into short modules, so you can dip in for ten minutes between tasks, or work through a full series when you can. There's no need to block out a whole day or travel anywhere - you simply log in and start watching, whenever and wherever works for you.

Every session is presented by people with genuine, hands-on experience in the fundraising sector who provide practical insight from people who understand the realities of fundraising, including the realities of doing it with limited time and resources.

Why this matters for small charities

We know that access to good-quality training and development shouldn't depend on having the time or the budget to take a day out of the office. For many small charities, sending someone on an external course or to a conference simply isn't realistic, however valuable it might be. The Knowledge Hub is one of the ways CIOF works to make learning easier to access, particularly for fundraisers in small teams, where stepping away from your desk can be hard to manage.

It also reflects something we hear from members: that fundraising can be unpredictable, and flexibility matters. Being able to fit learning around your working pattern, rather than the other way round, makes it far more likely that you'll actually get round to doing it. A module watched on a Tuesday morning, or during a lunch break, can make a real difference to how confident you feel tackling a task that afternoon.

Fundraising is a skilled and rewarding job, and we want to support everyone working in it to build a long-term career through training, qualifications and clear routes to progress, whatever shape your working life takes. For small charity fundraisers in particular, who often have fewer formal development opportunities than their counterparts in larger organisations, resources like this can make a genuine difference to how supported and equipped you feel in your role, as well as helping you to reach your full potential.

What's available right now

The topics currently available are created and designed by fundraising experts, with plenty that will be directly useful to small charity teams. Already on the Knowledge Hub are:

• Responsible AI for fundraising - helping you use AI tools wisely and ethically to support donor engagement and streamline your day-to-day work
• Introduction to fundraising ethics - building a deeper understanding of ethical decision-making in your professional practice
• Data literacy for fundraisers - demystifying data so you can make informed decisions and tell more compelling stories with the information you already have
• Introduction to managing vulnerabilities - building confidence in supporting people in vulnerable circumstances with care and consistency
• Supporter experience insights and actions - drawing on landmark research to help you understand what your supporters feel and how to grow their loyalty
• Building a fundraising-ready organisation - particularly useful if your charity is new to fundraising or branching into a new income stream
• Ethical recruitment of fundraisers - covering pay transparency, inclusive job design and how to recruit mission-aligned people
• Forecasting for fundraising - with specialist tips on building forecasting models to support data-driven decisions
• Building a case for support - helping you develop the essential proposition that underpins your fundraising with all donor audiences
• Public fundraising for charities and agencies - developed in partnership with industry specialists, for our levy-paying organisational members.
  
  

Access the Knowledge Hub

For a small charity, several of these topics could be transformative. If you're about to apply for your first major grant, the case for support module gives you a practical framework, and the Building a Fundraising Ready Organisation modules are worth looking at.

If you're thinking about how AI tools might help you work more efficiently, the responsible AI module offers a grounded, ethical starting point. And if your charity is taking its first steps into a new area of fundraising, the fundraising-ready organisation module is designed with exactly that situation in mind.

Make it work for your whole team

One of the best things about the Knowledge Hub is that the training isn't limited to one person.

As an organisational member, this benefit extends to your whole fundraising team, and to colleagues across your organisation too.

That might mean a trustee watching the ethical recruitment module before they recruit a new fundraiser, or a colleague in services watching the supporter experience research to better understand why stewardship matters.

If you're the person who manages your CIOF membership, it's worth taking a moment to flag the Knowledge Hub to your colleagues. A quick message in your team chat, or a five-minute slot in your next team meeting, could be all it takes to get more people using a benefit that's already paid for and ready to go.

Getting started with the Knowledge Hub

Visit the Knowledge Hub to browse the full list of topics and start watching. There's no need to work through everything at once. Pick the topic that feels most relevant to a challenge you're facing right now, watch the first module, and see where it takes you.

For small charity fundraisers, training and development can sometimes feel like something that happens to other people, in other organisations, with bigger budgets and more time.

The Knowledge Hub is a reminder that you already have access to high-quality, expert-led learning, and that it's there to be used, by you and by your wider team, whenever you're ready.

Access the Knowledge Hub

Become an organisational member

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