For Institutions
An investment in institutional capability
Your most significant philanthropic opportunities depend on the people leading them. Success requires leadership, collaboration and the ability to connect philanthropic ambition with institutional priorities.
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The Philanthropy Fellowship is a targeted investment in institutional capability, delivered through an individual. It develops the judgement, influence and strategic imagination your most significant opportunities require, applied throughout to your own live work.
Greater expectations do not create greater capability
Institutions are pursuing more ambitious philanthropy, often while managing constrained budgets, competing priorities and pressure to demonstrate results.
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Principal gifts involve complex relationships, significant institutional engagement and opportunities whose shape is not clear at first. The capabilities they require are not best developed by simply asking experienced fundraisers to pursue larger gifts. They need deliberate investment, and the Fellowship offers a targeted way to make it.
What your Institution gains
What could stronger capability make possible?
SHARPER PHILANTHROPIC JUDGEMENT
GREATER CONFIDENCE AND INFLUENCE
MORE EFFECTIVE COLLABORATION
STRONGER COMPLEX RELATIONSHIPS
WIDER PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP
Better-informed decisions about which opportunities to pursue, and how, grounded in a deeper understanding of philanthropists and their ambitions.
A colleague equipped to engage influential philanthropists, advisers and your senior leaders with credibility.
Colleagues, expertise and leadership brought together across organisational boundaries around your most significant opportunities.
Demanding philanthropic partnerships sustained and progressed through uncertainty and change.
A colleague with the self-awareness and judgement to contribute beyond their immediate fundraising role, strengthening your leadership for the future.
Progress is measured not only in gifts secured, but in stronger relationships, sharper judgement and more ambitious opportunities: lasting changes in how your colleague thinks and works. Sponsorship also shows your commitment to the people on whom your philanthropic ambitions depend.
Why this Fellowship
Why invest in one colleague?
Conventional fundraising training builds knowledge and technical skills across a team, and it matters. The Fellowship meets a different need: developing the judgement required when opportunities are complex, relationships are demanding and there is no established answer.
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Capability of that kind is built through intensive, personal development: realistic simulations, one-to-one mentoring, coaching and peer learning over ten months, applied throughout to your own live opportunities. It cannot be delivered at scale. Broad-based training and specialist development meet different needs, and most institutions need both.
Learn · Practise · Apply · Reflect · Refine
Choosing a Fellow
Who should you sponsor?
The Fellowship is most valuable for colleagues whose responsibilities, potential and proximity to significant philanthropic opportunities make deeper investment worthwhile.
Suitable candidates may include
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Major gifts professionals preparing to work at principal gifts level
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Principal gifts professionals seeking to deepen their strategic capability
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Senior fundraisers responsible for complex philanthropic partnerships
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High-potential colleagues whose development could advance your institution’s ambitions
Candidates do not need to have secured a principal gift. What matters is relevant experience, a commitment to development and real opportunities to apply what they learn.
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We are happy to discuss potential Fellows with you, in confidence, before any approach is made to them.
Questions to consider
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Where are our philanthropic ambitions placing new demands on professional capability?
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Which colleagues have the potential to make a greater contribution?
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Which complex relationships or opportunities could benefit from stronger judgement, influence or strategic imagination?
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How could developing this colleague strengthen others, including our institutional leadership?
Working with sponsors
A shared commitment
The Fellowship works best as a partnership between the Fellow, their institution and the Founding Partners.
How we work with you
What we ask of you
Before the Fellowship: a meeting with the Fellow, their line manager and their programme mentor to agree learning goals and institutional context.
Senior engagement: where possible, a conversation with your Director or institutional leadership.
Mid-point review (April): progress, focus and priorities for the remaining months.
Final review (October): what has changed, and how to sustain it.
Connect it to your priorities: identify the relationships and opportunities where the Fellow’s development can make a difference.
Create space: protect time for workshops, mentoring and coaching.
Encourage application: give the Fellow room to test new approaches in their work.
Look beyond immediate results: recognise growth in judgement, confidence and collaboration alongside progress on individual opportunities.