We have decades of experience in training individuals and teams in a variety of disciplines, including how to develop strategic plans, write effective copy, and work together more effectively. These sessions can be delivered online or in person.

Contact us to discuss your needs and how we could help you – call 01273 964018 or email rdocwra@hotmail.com.

Below are some examples of training sessions that we offer:

Planning

How to get organised – many teams and individuals in the charity sector are not working as efficiently as they could, and this is reducing the impact and income of their causes. This workshop helps your team to organise itself more effectively – both collectively and as individuals. We help you to review and optimise your key processes (from collecting case studies to signing off creative work), consider how you can work together more effectively as a team, and help team members to improve their time and project management skills.

Planning for uncertainty – the future is unpredictable, yet being prepared for a range of future scenarios can help organisations react quicker and more effectively to them – and perhaps even help them survive. This workshop helps boards, leaders and senior management to stand back from their day-to-day work and identify possible future events and what they could put in place now to respond to them should they happen.

How to write an Individual Giving plan – this intensive one-day masterclass will take you through a simple process to help you build a successful fundraising and communications plan for individual supporters. Using examples from UK charities, we will show you how to approach each step of the planning process, including understanding your audience, developing your strategy and producing simple financial forecasts. We will also look in detail at specific fundraising activities to include in your plans so you can recruit more supporters and build more profitable relationships with existing donors.

Behavioural science

How understanding human beings can increase your impact – most people, including our leaders and those seeking social change, have a completely inaccurate view of how human beings think and behave. This has serious consequences, as evidence suggests we can’t seek change effectively without understanding people first – whether this is developing an effective vision of a better society, or more detailed issues such as how to communicate effectively. This important big picture workshop uses evidence from psychology to show how human beings think and behave, and how this vital knowledge can transform the impact of your policies, organisation, communications and people.

How to use behavioural science to gain more impact – this workshop explores how human beings make decisions and how the social change sector can apply this knowledge to achieve greater impact. It provides you with a practical toolkit from behavioural science to help you increase the effectiveness and impact of your work, whether it is policy making, service delivery, HR, campaigning, communications or fundraising.

Fundraising
These are challenging times for many charities. The need for funds is growing, whilst budgets are being squeezed. So, we’ve developed our fundraising workshops to enable charities to bring our agency skills to your in-house team. Each session could help you raise significantly more money from your appeals in-house.

How to improve your Individual Giving programme – everything you need to know about building a successful Individual Giving programme – from the activities to include, through to how to get the best results out of each one. If you’re looking to strengthen your IG programme or start one up from scratch, this is the session for you. Click here for details

How to build a legacy fundraising programme – if your charity is not sending proper legacy appeals to its supporters, you could be missing out on millions of pounds each year. This workshop gives you everything you need to set up and run a simple and highly effective legacy fundraising programme. We’ll show you how you can make the case for legacy fundraising at your charity, help you build a simple legacy communications plan (including supporter care) and even help you develop an effective legacy fundraising appeal to supporters! Click here for details

How to build a regular giving offer – monthly regular gifts provide the foundations of long-term income for many charities. It is therefore critical to have an engaging, attractive and effective regular giving offer, and a clear strategy for how you will build relationships with, and the value of, your supporters on it. In this workshop, we share our decades of experience to help you develop ideas for your regular giving offer, and then begin building a communications programme for it, including an initial set of supporter journeys.

How to build a low cost supporter recruitment programme – recruiting new supporters has become difficult and expensive for many charities. But in this session we will show you a simple and cost-effective way to do it, using your existing touch points with the public. You’ll learn a step by step process to identify the places where you’re likely to recruit the most supporters from. We’ll then show you how to prioritise these sources, and then how to recruit as many new supporters as possible from each of these. Click here for details

Creative masterclass – how to write a strong fundraising appeal – if you want to produce more successful fundraising appeals but can’t afford external help, then this is the workshop for you. Using practical examples and exercises, we will teach your team the key principles of writing effective fundraising copy for direct mail and email, and by the end of the day you will be able to produce much more effective appeals in-house. This is a popular workshop that has been completed by many charities including Leonard Cheshire, Rethink Mental Illness, and the New Economics Foundation. Click here for more details

Creative masterclass – regular giving upgrades and conversion – in this workshop, we’ll explore every aspect of regular giving, including the communications you need to send to convert, retain and upgrade monthly regular givers, the most effective channels to use and how to set your ask levels. We’ll also show you how to develop an effective conversion/upgrade appeal for regular giving, using practical examples of successful appeals from other charities. Click here for details

Creative masterclass – legacy fundraising appeals – this practical workshop will help you write and develop effective legacy fundraising appeals, using examples from successful appeals for other charities.

To book one of these courses or discuss your needs, call us on 01273 964018 or email rdocwra@hotmail.com. Also, check out our Resources section for a range of free guides, toolkits, insights and advice to help you work and seek change more effectively.

Client quotes

This was excellent training. Thanks very much. Sometimes in the world of public affairs I come away from training thinking that the person doing it doesn’t really know what they’re talking about and it’s rare that I end up with more than a couple of suggestions of things that we’ll change/improve. But on Friday I ended up with a long list. Well done on everything you do!
Richy Thompson, Director of Public Affairs and Policy, Humanists UK

I’ve had some really great feedback from everyone that attended the copywriting workshop – thanks ever so much, I have no doubt whatsoever that it’ll really help us going forward.
Paul White – Former Head of Supporter Recruitment and Development, Fauna & Flora International

Can I just say how useful the session last month about recruiting supporters for individual giving was? That was probably one of the most helpful webinar sessions I’ve attended since everything went online a couple of years ago and we’re inspired!
Anonymous attendee