After five years, Rogare’s outgoing chair Heather Hill offers a few thoughts on her time in the role.
If you are fortunate in your professional development, you may find yourself in a conference session that both invigorates your thinking and inspires you to take a step you perhaps otherwise would not have considered possible.
For me, I had the incredibly good fortune to be in a session on fundraising ethics at the International Fundraising Congress in 2015, where I was introduced to Rogare.
I now find myself, nearly 10 years later, stepping down as Rogare’s chair after five years of serving in that role and having both seen, participated in and led projects that questioned a wide range of things about fundraising and what it means to be a professional fundraiser. Things such as:
While projects and publications are important, more important is disseminating their key points. The last five years have provided ample opportunities for that, whether through social media outlets, blogs, webinars, conference sessions around the world and three Rogare ‘taster’ days at Kingston University.
It’s been a full and fulfilling five years, which I am honoured to have helped to lead. To say I am grateful to have been chair of Rogare would be an understatement. Ever since that fateful conference session, Rogare has been a source of inspiration and motivation for me, even at times a source of inquisition as the work served to further enhance my critical thinking and ask question upon question about our profession and practice.
There remains a plethora of questions to be asked and explored. Some of them have been burning questions for years, such as how fundraisers should be compensated and is commission-based pay really as unethical as it is supposed to be, and others are arising as the environment in and tools with which we practice continue to evolve. For example, we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface regarding the ethical use of AI in fundraising.
As I step down from the role of chair and Damian Chapman steps into it, I am both excited and inspired knowing that he fully embraces Rogare’s ‘to ask’ mandate. His vision for Rogare will build on the volume of work already done and raise it to new levels. One could not ask for a better successor.
The support of Rogare’s Associate Members and its global network is something for which I will always be grateful, and I know Damian will have that same support to encourage him as he carries on Rogare’s work of asking all the questions and creating more critical fundraisers.
Cheers to the last five years and cheers to the next!
- Heather Hill is head of international philanthropy and Chapel & York and remains a member of Rogare’s Critical Fundraising Network.
Rogare is supported in our work by a number of Associate Members – partners to the fundraising sector that share our critical fundraising ethos. Our Associate Members are:
