Continuity cover

Your programme should not depend on one person staying

Most development teams have one person per job. When somebody leaves, the relationships and the plan walk out with them, and the Giving Day or the telephone appeal they were running simply does not happen that year. Continuity cover keeps the whole programme going, from regular giving to major gifts.

A fundraising team working together around a table

Why it happens

It is structural, not a failing

Small specialist teams have no bench. One major gifts officer, one annual fund manager, one person who knows how the Giving Day actually runs. That is true of almost every development office in the country, and it is why a single resignation costs so much more here than it would in a larger function. What that person knows lives with them rather than with the institution, and it leaves on the same day they do.

3 to 6 months typical vacancy in education fundraising, once notice periods are counted

One year is what a missed Giving Day costs, because the date does not come round again

12 to 18 months for a new fundraiser to take a fresh relationship to a first major gift

Major and mid-level giving

Relationships that stall

A portfolio stops being worked the day somebody hands in their notice. Prospects who were eighteen months into cultivation go quiet, and the successor cannot pick up a conversation they were never part of. The money is not lost, but it arrives years later than it should have, and some of it never arrives at all.

Regular giving, Giving Days and telephone appeals

A year you cannot get back

This is the one that really hurts, and it is the one nobody plans for. A Giving Day is fixed to a date. A telephone appeal has a calling window set by term dates and student availability. Lose the person who runs it in February and the March Giving Day does not slip, it does not happen. The donors it would have recruited are not recruited, the regular gifts it would have started are not started, and attrition carries on regardless, so you come back the following year from a lower base than you left.

What you get

Someone who already knows your programme

The value is in the knowing. A consultant who arrives the week after a resignation takes as long to become useful as a new hire would. One who has sat in your monthly meeting for a year, listened in on your calling shifts and watched your last Giving Day from the inside can pick the programme up in a morning.

Two colleagues working through notes together across a table — Photo Rawpixel Ltd, CC BY 2.0

A named consultant in the room

Someone senior joins your monthly team meeting, sits in on donor calls, and listens in on a calling shift while your appeal is live, so they understand your programme, your segments and your quirks before anything goes wrong.

Your programme, written down

A live record of how your fundraising actually runs: the pipeline, the Giving Day timetable, the calling segments and scripts, who holds which relationships, why the last decision was taken. Maintained month by month, not written in somebody’s last week.

Ready to step in

When somebody leaves, the same person you already know moves up to three or four days a week and runs the appeal, the Giving Day or the portfolio while you recruit. No procurement exercise at the worst possible moment.

How it works

A small monthly commitment, and cover when you call it

A monthly retainer

A fixed monthly fee for the presence and the documentation. Small enough to sit inside a normal budget line, and quoted per team depending on the size of your programme.

An annual continuity review

Once a year we show you exactly what would survive a departure and what would not, so you can see what the cover is actually protecting.

Cover when you call it

Interim delivery at an agreed day rate and an agreed response time, for as long as the recruitment takes. You only pay for it if you need it.

Who it is for

Teams of three to eight fundraisers

Universities, Oxbridge colleges and schools raising roughly one to five million a year, across regular giving and major gifts alike. Big enough that a departure takes out a serious share of your capacity, small enough that there is nobody internally to absorb it. If your Giving Day or your telephone appeal depends on one person being there in March, this is for you. Below that scale we would usually suggest our interim management service as and when you need it, rather than cover you may not use.

Let's talk about your next campaign

A 30-minute conversation with someone who has run campaigns like yours, no hard sell.

Talk to a fundraising expert