How do you eat an elephant...

This time last month, I spent three days with over 1,660 of my closest friends at Fundraising Institute of Australia's 2025 International Conference. The theme was More Great in your Good.

The plenary sessions were delivered by Mark Phillips of Bluefrog Fundraising, Dan Pallotta of Uncharitable the movie and Rochelle Courtenay from Share the Dignity

There were fifty-eight exhibitors, fifty-six sessions across seven pillars, 183.5 man hours of presentations, twenty-seven individual hours of fundraising learning and networking, seven masterclasses, eight sector discussion groups, one lunch to celebrate new fellows and one fabulous Awards dinner.

A highlight of the three-day event was the tribute to Dr. Sue-Anne Wallace AM, who passed away early last year. From 2005 to 2009, Sue-Anne served as the Executive Officer at the Fundraising Institute Australia and later became the CEO of the Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation. In 2015, she received a Churchill Scholarship to examine international best practices in self-regulation and complaints handling. She developed a comprehensive set of ethical fundraising guidelines for not-for-profit organizations and collaborated with an international committee, including Paulette Maehara, then President of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, to create an international standard. In 2017, she was honored as a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her “significant service to the not-for-profit sector, particularly through charitable fundraising reform and establishing codes of practice.” Sue-Anne also chaired the ACFID Code of Conduct Committee and participated on numerous Boards. She consistently championed ethical fundraising, enhanced governance, and accountability in the not-for-profit sector.

I came away with many pages of notes, photos of slides, new ideas for current projects and new ways to achieve results for my clients. I learnt about best practice for Giving Day, how to improve the Mid Value donor Journey, so much jargon around digital fundraising and AI, and the importance of listening to our supporters rather than assuming we know what they want.

An important sector wide initiatives is Project Overheads - Pay What It Takes. This began as a collaboration between Philanthropy Australia, Social Ventures Australia and the Centre for Social Impact and has recently launched a new website here https://paywhatittakes.com.au/, It is important for all NFP's to be part of the conversation to reframe the narrative around overhead costs.

As always, three days of intensive learning is a lot and it can take a while to consider and process all of the information provided. Choose one thing and implement it, then move on to the next. Work your way through the learnings, it's ok to discard some that may not be relevant for your current circumstance. don't try and change everything altogether all at once.

The answer to the question posed at the top of the article is... one bite at a time.

And remember as you introduce those changes, if you don't measure it you can't manage it.