Fundraisers as Ethical Leaders: Reflections on How Leadership and Fundraising Overlap, and What We Can Learn From the Charity Sector.

Fundraisers as Ethical Leaders

Our first Fellowship residential involved talks on different aspects and models of leadership. Among the more traditional models of artistic and business leadership, one idea that really resonated with me was the one introduced by Lecturer Dr Jonathan Price, of fundraisers as ethical leaders.

Jon argues that to build a strong case for support, fundraisers are often the ones who ask questions such as “who is the work for?’’, “what is the need?” and “how does it contribute to our mission?” These questions are not only essential for fundraising but also a vital part of effective leadership.

As someone whose leadership style and role doesn’t fit neatly into the artistic/business split that is typical in many theatre companies, I felt a lot of affinity with this approach. I’ve often found myself leaning towards the charity sector and feel that there is a lot to learn from charities in their approaches to leadership and the questions they ask.

The Questions We Ask

We often talk about fundraising for sustainability, but as the brilliant Euella from Rising Arts Agency pointed out to me once, charities should be fundraising so that we no longer have to exist. Thinking about what the world would look like if we no longer had to exist, or what is the problem we are trying to solve, is perhaps what distinguishes arts charities from commercial arts organisations and has benefits beyond our core fundraising case for support.

Beyond the funding ask, thinking like a charity can help to re-frame the conversation in both our organisations and the sector more widely. At Travelling Light, it has helped us keep children and young people at the centre of our thinking, and for the sector, perhaps it can move us on from the age-old and divisive excellence vs social impact debate to ask a different set of questions.

Understanding Our ‘Why’ at Travelling Light

At Travelling Light, we have spent the last three years developing a new direction of travel and delivering a new business plan and model after leaving the Arts Council’ England’s National Portfolio in 2023. In steering this work, having at the same time taken on my first role as sole CEO, thinking like a charity as well as a theatre company helped to shape both my approach to the role and Travelling Light’s development.

Based on a provocation from one of our Trustees, “where are the children’s voices in this?”, we worked with an evaluator to speak to children, schools, artists and our community, and ask questions about what they value about Travelling light, what is unique about our work, and perhaps most important, albeit difficult, of all, what would be lost if we were no longer here?

Using this evidence, we were then able to utilise learning from AMA and AFP’s Shared Ambition training to develop our refreshed vision, mission and values, and build our business plan aims (all of which have a clear need and evidence base). This all fed into our Theory of Change, which we developed with the excellent support of Flying Geese Consultancy.