...who want to be going to their sessions and we're just a few minutes over
9 o'clock so I'm going to make a
wrap but all I'm going to say is just a very few words
about what we're going to need in the following months and years. We're going to need a vision if we're going to survive
this and thrive through it and we have been
inspired by many people in our
lives who have given us vision and we have learned from them. We need
optimism, if a man hasn't survived and thrived and given the world something
with greater optimism than Nelson Mandela, how can we be in this room
and be pessimistic fundraisers? We need optimism. If you're Spanish you see you've got
simultaneous translation going on. We need
ambition. Who would have thought in that time of Martin Luther King
we're possibly on the cusp, and I pray that we are,
even though I don't pray, that we're going to have
a black, Democratic president
who actually knows something about the world and knows something about poverty and its needs. We need mobile phones that are turned off.
As I say I work in Spain we've heard from Argentina, we've got flamenco, we've got salsa
we've got tango, this is the time to tango but
we need to approach our fundraising with more passion and
vigour and energy than ever before. You've heard from Amanda
how the INGOs got together and in a sense
helped build a mutual action plan and you've heard from Norma
how a bank of Santander managed to
co-operate with a food bank to help a country
and an organisation in crisis. Now is a time for
co-operation more than ever. Don't say no that's my data,
that's my information, that's my experience, I'm not
going to share it with you. I've been coming here 21 years
it's the best 21, the best thing I do every year in
21 years because it's about sharing, it's about  sharing our
knowledge. It's also about sharing our support
so some of you will be having a hard time, no doubt, from your
boards, from your CEOs who will say, no we can't
invest. Call up one of the people in this room and say
did you get it through your board, can you even come and speak to my management team?
And you'll be surprised how open other people
are to speak to your management team. I remember when I was at Greenpeace I
used to go and speak to the management team at WWF, they're all competitors
but it helped xxxxx xxxxxxx get his things through and he did likewise. It's a time for
innovation, you know, Argentina, xxxxxxx and Norma
were innovating their way through a crisis. This is when the really
smart thinking comes out and I still think some of the
best fundraising ideas have not come out of the great
nice years as the governor of the Bank of England
it's often when we struggle that we come up with our best ideas. I think we've heard it from everybody today
you know, Warren, is probably the only person, Warren Buffett is probably the only person
that has got massively richer than it gets in the last few
weeks and months because he actually knows how to invest wisely
and I urge you to invest wisely but
push your management team, push your boards to invest, invest in data
research even stuff that you can't quantify necessarily, it's going to bring
you an immediate return on investment. Same thing again
Marcella said what did you need in a crisis, you need information
better information. When I first started coming here
the fundraising world was mostly direct mail driven
there's one thing the direct mail industry in fundraising had is they had a huge focus
on data. They could tell you if your head looked that way or that way what percentage
response uplift that might give to a direct mail appeal. I believe
we've got very lazy about managing information in recent years.
I'm a gut instinct fundraiser myself but I think we should be armed with better
information, and information that we share. And as I say, everything's going to be on
blogs, Howard's stuff's going to be on YouTube later today,
that he's been filming in this session, share everything you can. Integration
as you heard, when you're in crisis you spend more on upgrading
and other activities within your fundraising but integrate
it less. We're often throwing money away because we're using internet
without thinking how the telephone can be integrated, and as we've heard, speaking to your donors
which is usually by telephone, is one of the best ways of convincing
them and dealing with their concerns. It's going to be a combination of our
heads and our hearts, the passion and the brain in the next few weeks and months and above all, let's
keep smiling because if you don't smile through a crisis
if we don't tango, if we don't salsa, if we don't waltz
we'll not get through it. So smile, enjoy the rest of the conference
and go raise truckloads of money. Thank you.
