Legacy Futures and The Elischer Foundation partner to support legacy fundraisers in career development for senior leadership roles.
A new sector initiative to support legacy fundraisers in developing their careers and working towards positions of senior charity leadership has been launched through a partnership between Legacy Futures and The Elischer Foundation (previously The Tony Elischer Foundation).
The initiative, which has been sparked in response to the current gap in legacy knowledge among senior leadership roles, will offer mentees a year-long development pathway with additional benefits. These additional benefits include quarterly ‘lunch and learn’ webinars and participation in an annual leadership day to connect and learn with programme alumni.
Ashley Rowthorn, CEO of Legacy Futures, explained:
“The recruitment and retention of legacy fundraisers is a pressing challenge for the sector. A key issue is that there is no clear pathway for legacy and in-memory fundraisers to progress into more senior positions, and many feel they need to move away from legacies to further their careers. This means many organisations are lacking a good understanding of legacy fundraising in their leadership teams, which can hinder an organisation’s growth.”
Benefits of the partnership
The collaboration supersedes Legacy Futures’ previous Future Leaders Bursary Award and now provides 12 months of free mentoring instead of six. It sees additional placements being offered on The Elischer Foundation’s existing mentoring programme, which supports committed and ambitious fundraisers in achieving great impact in their careers, and across the sector as a whole. By pooling expertise and resources, the programme will now also offer participants the benefit of knowledge and expertise in the legacy and in-memory giving markets, as a number of Legacy Futures’ experts join as mentors.
A minimum of two placements in the new (2024) cohort will be reserved for applicants within the legacy fundraising sector.
Ashley added:
“Our partnership with The Elischer Foundation will strengthen their already exceptional mentoring offering by bringing vital legacy experience into the Foundation’s mentoring pathway. Working together, we can combine our efforts and expertise, and enable more mentees to benefit from the programme.”
Laura Swan, Interim Director, The Elischer Foundation, said:
“Partnering with Legacy Futures means that even more professional fundraisers looking to develop their leadership skills will benefit from the mentorship programme, and in turn more organisations will benefit too. The ripple effect of investing in fundraisers is considerable for the charity sector, which gains not just financially from highly skilled fundraisers, but also in terms of raising awareness, reaching more service users and helping to tell the story of their impact. It’s a delight for us to be working with Legacy Futures, who will bring their extensive legacy knowledge to our programme and whose commitment to continuing the professional development of future fundraising leaders is aligned with our own.”
Applications
Applications to the mentoring programme must be made through The Elischer Foundation’s website.
The application window is open now and closes 23rd January 2024. Successful applicants will be notified by 19 February 2024. The programme will begin at the end of March 2024.
