How do we make professional development more accessible?

If there is anything that my twenty-plus years in this space has revealed, it’s that professional associations have a way of getting themselves into a mess of trouble. While I’m sure the reasons for this can simmer up from just about anywhere, I suspect most of the trouble is emerges in between the inclination to create rulebooks for how to most ethically get the job done and the need to ensure that their sponsors are happy enough to underwrite next year’s conference. Recently, after watching yet another group of members unravel their disappointments with conference organizers in the Twitterverse, I began to wonder how long these associations will be able to maintain their role as fundraising’s gate-keepers to professional development and networking.

I had a hunch that our friends at FundraisingEverywhere might have some ideas about how traditional associations might keep themselves out of trouble. In 2019, Nikki and Simon founded FundraisingEverywhere in order to answer a similar question; how do we make professional development and networking opportunities more accessible to more fundraisers? Their timing couldn’t have been better; with prohibitive fees increasingly scaring fundraisers away from association membership and insiders increasingly dominating the conversation, Nikki and Simon launched a platform that is now hosting some of fundraising’s most important conversations.

As always, we are especially grateful to our friends at CueBack for sponsoring The Fundraising Talent Podcast.

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