In Your Shoes - Elma Mackay

Perfect Planning

In fundraising, success lies in the planning, so Monday is a day at the laptop getting set up for the rest of the week. First thing is a Skype call with my colleagues from the rest of Scotland and Northern Ireland. It’s an opportunity to talk through our opportunities and challenges for the week, and to catch up with everyone. We work remotely, all based at home which could get isolating, so calls like these are important. The rest of the day was spent planning for a volunteer meeting, a corporate meeting, and updating the pipeline – all part of the planning. I then travelled to Dundee for tomorrow’s breakfast networking event, staying at an old school friends who loves nothing more than tiring me out with a long walk before I head off to bed, but it’s always great to catch up with her. 

Networking: Making Connections

First for today was Dundee and Angus Chamber’s Dundee Airport event, followed with a first meeting with a new volunteer who has taken on the role of Promotions and Publicity Volunteer.  She is now busy with Christmas Jumper Day.  Volunteers are a vital part of fundraising and we are blessed to have two hands on, dedicated volunteers in Dundee now.  The more volunteers we have, the more funds we can raise, and the more children we can help.  Moya Fox is our speaking out champion, and always keen to speak to groups about the work Save the Children are involved with, contact her on m.c.fox@dundee.ac.uk.  I then met with our Dundee University Society students, a passionate and enthusiastic group, so lovely to catch up with them.  I finished this trip with another networking event at DP&L before heading back up to Inverness in time to kiss my youngest goodnight.

Building Relationships

I started off the morning with a lovely meeting with a potential supporter in Inverness. Save the Children are sector leading in the way we work with businesses and this meeting was about finding out more about the business, and if we could find some common objectives to work on.   My role is all about relationship building and I am hopeful that we are on the way to creating a relationship that works for each other.  Evidence shows that working in partnership with a charity helps with staff morale, teamwork, and good staff retention.   Having had a bit of time away from my desk, the rest of the day was spent catching up on emails and following up from the meetings and events over the last couple of days.

Making the world better with a Sweater

With Christmas fast approaching, we are asking everyone to wear a Christmas jumper on 14th December and donate to Save the Children. Today I received promotional material and started my plan of action. I contacted local organisations, such as supermarkets, community centres and pubs, to ask for them to display the poster and to sign up themselves. To sign up visit www.christmasjumperday.org/signup. It’s a fabulous fundraising campaign that has raised £16m since it was launched in 2012. This is the first year Save the Children has had a dedicated Community Fundraising Manager, based in the North of Scotland so it’s a great opportunity to get involved, knowing the local support in the local community is there. Our local branch in Angus also get involved with promoting our campaigns, along with running their own events. 

Making the most of every opportunity

Friday is prospecting day, contacting leads from my pipeline to set up appointments to discuss the partnership opportunity Save the Children can offer them. We work in 120 countries across the world, delivering change for children but local engagement is vital to enable us to do that.

I spent the afternoon planning for meetings on Monday in Aberdeen – with a volunteer, and a secondary school, and then finished off the day with some prep for a P6 talk in a primary school next week.

After a busy week, the weekend is here which involves buying a Christmas jumper for my daughter, a Curry Night with some friends and hopefully lots of ATP world final tennis to watch from my sofa, with no Murray it should be nice and relaxed, although missing the tension of watching him play. After all that, I will be ready for the next week of busy-ness.