Volunteer fundraising manager: Gary

This Case Study belongs to Charity fundraiser.

Gary is a volunteer fundraising manager for the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. He is based in Glasgow and has worked in his current role for less than a year. Gary studied business at Glasgow Caledonian University and worked in fundraising roles for various charities throughout his life. He has been working in charity fundraising for five years since graduating.

I started fundraising and volunteering when I was 12 years old and over the years I got more and more involved with the charity that I was supporting. After a few years I thought that it would be great to turn my hobby into my profession. I count myself very fortunate that I now work in a field that I’m very passionate about and thoroughly enjoy.

As part of my degree I studied finance, human resource management and marketing, all of which were required competencies for my current role. My degree gave me a vital firm and rounded experience that I still benefit from.

I started my career in fundraising at Cancer Research UK as a community fundraiser. This role evolved to become an area volunteer manager. This marks a significant change in the fundraising roles seeing a move away from doing the fundraising myself (i.e. organising fundraising events myself) to providing support to people who wish to fundraise. I was promoted to the role of regional manager for Cancer Research UK and then moved to a similar role with the National Autistic Society.

I found out about my current role with the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign through a recruitment agency. I registered with the agency some time ago and completely out of the blue received a call from them asking me if I’d be interested in this role. My job with the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign is a new role that was created following a change in their approach to fundraising and I’m responsible for developing and implementing our fundraising strategy in Scotland. So far, this has included a review of our current fundraising and events portfolio, research into our external environment to identify opportunities and thinking creatively as to how we can involve more people with the charity.

The main thing I enjoy about my job is meeting such incredibly inspirational people. It never ceases to amaze me what volunteers can achieve. I also enjoy the feeling of making a difference through my work. What I find hard is that it’s difficult to find the time to give everything and everyone the attention they deserve. I also do a lot of travelling, which at times is not such fun, especially when the flights are delayed!

My advice to those who want to pursue a career in fundraising is to volunteer in order to gain as much relevant experience as possible. If it hadn’t been for my volunteering experience I would have never got my first job with Cancer Research UK after I graduated.

Looking forward, I’d like to move into a head of fundraising post with a national charity.

Case Study sourced by Kirsten Roche of University of Newcastle, 20 November 2009.