Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year

Fundraising Team - Pride in London

Pride in London is a volunteer led organisation. Every year around 50 of these volunteers dedicate their time to fundraising to help raise the £1.2million needed to make sure that the event can take place and that Pride remains free and accessible to all. They do this alongside their day jobs and are dedicated to helping make sure that the LGBT+ community has a platform which helps to amplify their voices and also gives them the space to be their true selves.

Jamie McDonald - Superhero Foundation

Jamie McDonald is a world-record-holding adventurer, bestselling author, prolific fundraiser and co-founder of ‘Superhero Foundation’.

To date, Jamie has raised over a million pounds for charity and was recently recognised as ITV’s national Pride of Britain for ‘Fundraiser of the Year’.

He believes in not ‘guilting’ people to donate, but instead to ‘inspire’, which will have a much more long-lasting, positive impact in the charity sector.

What is so special about Jamie is that he never earns a penny from any of his fundraising efforts and has vowed that he never will - he’s a true superhero!

Joan Webb - RNLI

To operate a professional 24-hour search and rescue service at 238 lifeboat stations, the RNLI must raise almost £180 million every year. Volunteer fundraiser Joan Webb is helping to make this happen. At 100 years old, Joan’s first introduction to the RNLI was aged five, when she helped her mother with a street collection. A lifetime later, with decades of volunteering for the RNLI behind her, she is still actively fundraising, helping run souvenir sales, coffee mornings and Christmas card sales with the Basingstoke and District RNLI branch. Recognised by the RNLI and the wider community for her dedication to fundraising, she’s a role model and an inspiration. Just like the RNLI’s volunteer lifeboat crew, Joan gets out there come rain or shine, giving her time and energy to save lives at sea. She’s a lifesaver in her own right.

Rachel Clark - We Hear You

Rachel has raised more than £55,000 in the last 7 years for We Hear You, funding more than 1250 counselling sessions for local families affected by cancer.

Her challenges have grown year on year, but it is int he last 2 years that she has made it her personal challenge to engage a community, to raise awareness as well as money. In 2018 she gathered more than 700 people to break a 24hr rowing world record. In 2019 she ran a mile every day for the year, she ran with more than 5,000 people no mater the weather or location.  Her challenges have attracted the attention of the local media, earning her a shortlisting for a pride of Britain award along with a number of other awards including Frome's person of the year. She is the most inspiring and motivated of fundraisers, who gives her all to raising funds, spreading awareness of our services and encouraging others to get involved. Rachel has created something incredibly special for both our charity and the community of Frome which we know will continue for years to come, though new challenges and new supporters and fundraisers.

Sarah Parish & Jim Murray - The Murray Parish Trust

Sarah Parish and James Murray are busy professional actors, but had renewed purpose to help critically ill children after losing their eight month old daughter Ella-Jayne to a congenital heart defect. Their incredible commitment of time to fundraising for The Murray Parish Trust means 90% of funds raised are spent on projects that help critically ill or injured children and young people receive the best emergency/critical hospital care, close to home.

Young Fundraiser of the Year

Daisy Pearson

14 year old Daisy Pearson from Holt in North Norfolk suffers from Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) Simplex, a genetic skin condition which causes the skin to blister and tear at the slightest touch. She has been fundraising, with the support of her family, for the charity DEBRA for 12 years – raising money to fund pioneering research into her condition. In September 2019 Daisy’s fundraising saw her reach an incredible £60,000 over the last decade – purely from community fundraising in North Norfolk.

“This is a remarkable story of local, regular fundraising that has both raised a huge amount of money over time and has really engaged with the local community on incredible levels,” Fundraising Director of DEBRA, Hugh Thompson.

Eli-Jo House

Eli-Jo is a remarkable 13-year-old lady who has helped raise just under £57,000 for Crohn’s & Colitis UK since tragically losing her Dad, who had Crohn’s Disease, in 2017. She has an incredible determination to help other families affected by the conditions through fundraising and raising awareness. She’s used her own skills, connections and the power of her story and we are immensely proud of her.

Humphrey Hamilton Barnes

After a devastating house fire in 2019, 8-year old Humphrey Hamilton Barnes and his family lost almost everything. Despite going through this incredibly difficult time himself, Humphrey decided that he wanted to give back to other children around the world. He signed up to take part in the Soccer Aid for Unicef Great Big Kickabout to raise as much money as he could to help children all over the world. He gathered his community to support his fundraising goal and inspired a team of 100 children to take part in a 2-hour long football tournament, raising a huge £1,300 to help Soccer Aid for Unicef make sure more children are able to live, learn and play safely, just like children should.

Fundraiser of the Year

Andy Watts - Sue Ryder

Andy joined Sue Ryder in 2017, bringing over 10 years of experience in trust fundraising. By the end of 18/19 he had converted trust fundraising at the organisation, embedding a completely new approach and driving the team to an incredible 349% increase on income – to £2.8million.  His aim was to focus the team on relationship management, cultivating key trust relationships and delivering excellent supporter experience.

Andy recognises that the relationship is key, and that looked after well, Trusts will give again and again to an organisation. With this approach, a year on from his bumper first year, Andy is still leading the team to success. 

Andy’s passion is supporter experience. He champions the use of the ultra-personalised touch, surprising and delighting our Trust supporters of every level, either to celebrate a milestone, update or simply thank them.

Earlier this year Andy’s blog for the IoF website was featured as one of the five most popular of the year. He has also spoken at various events including the IoF Trust Conference. He is very committed to the sector and to educating and encouraging more fundraisers to achieve success in their trust fundraising.

On top of his job at Sue Ryder and his work sharing his knowledge on Trust fundraising, Andy is also a Trustee of Homestart Hertfordshire, where he has worked with the team to support their fundraising strategy.

Andy has all the traits on an excellent fundraiser, from being thoughtful and well planned, to supportive and interested in others, to taking bold decisions and ultimately making the ask when it counts.

Antonia Brownlee - Scottish Ballet

Scottish Ballet’s Head of Philanthropy, Antonia Brownlee initiated the companies most ambitious fundraising campaign yet, the Five in Five Campaign – supporting the commission and staging of five new full-length ballets in five years, one for every decade of the company’s history. Through supporting her team members to excel, she has tripled the number of our gala guests at our golden themed 50th anniversary gala.

Dean Anderson - ActionAid

Dean started at ActionAid UK as Deputy Director of Philanthropy and Partnerships in 2016.  He developed a new ambitious strategy and culture, developed and promoted internal staff and recruited externally to create an exceptional team, including three new focal areas; Corporate Engagement, Principal Giving and New Markets.

Dean also repurposed the research team into a more focused Strategy and Insight Team, who developed innovative products and approaches to increase unrestricted strategic income, like ‘Co-Financing’ (unrestricted donations leveraging existing work to deliver more impact) and ‘Peer-Matched-Giving’ (Major Donors matching donations raised by other supporters during emergency appeals).

Dean also led the development of a successful brand partnership with England Netball through personal stewardship of their CEO, Jo Adams, and co-led the development of the Country Partnership initiative with the ActionAid Federation, enabling close strategic ties, support and funding for key strategic partners.

Dean also encouraged his team’s development, and wider cross-organisational role.  His team have run several global skill-share sessions to build the fundraising capacity of the ActionAid federation in places like Liberia.  His team also supported cross-organisational initiatives like Safeguarding and Transparency.

From 2016 to 2019, Dean and the Philanthropy and Partnerships Team repeatedly smashed targets and beat expectations, doubling income from £3.5m to £7m.  The target for 2020 is £9m.

Eddie Taylor - Alive and Kicking

Eddies’ enthusiasm, innovation and personality has not only increased the charity's income substantially, it has diversified our supporter base and given us the platform to make lasting impact across the communities we support. This is why he should be awarded Fundraiser of the Year

Sally Bramall - The Brain Tumour Charity

Sally’s daughter Lizzie was diagnosed with a diffuse midline glioma (a rare childhood brain tumour), and after a brave but devastating battle, Lizzie passed away, aged just 9, in 2018.  Since that time, Sally, through the setting up of Lizzie’s Fund Supporter Group,  in Lizzie’s memory, has raised over £268,000.  Sally has worked tirelessly, with great passion and commitment, from Lizzie’s diagnosis, through the most difficult time when she lost Lizzie, and has continued to do so to the present day. Already planning activities and events for 2020 and beyond, with a target of reaching £300k by the summer.

Sally is determined that Lizzie’s death will not be in vain. Through Lizzie’s Fund, Sally continues to be a real inspiration, raising awareness & much needed funds in aid of The Brain Tumour Charity to enable research in to childhood brain tumours, so that in future,  families and children like Lizzie, will not have to go through this painful experience and journey.

Rising Star

Becka Storer - Sue Ryder

From the moment she arrived for her interview at Sue Ryder, it was clear Becka would be a star within the organisation and the wider sector. The combination of her ability to charm colleagues and supporters alike; her vision in implementing new fundraising ideas; the subtle improvements she makes thinking nobody notices and her passion to support the charity in whatever capacity she can; not to mention her furious work ethic, confidence in her own abilities and enthusiasm to learn. She inspires the team, leads through her actions and is a delight to work with - and we're not just saying that because she will be running the show in years to come.

Calum Coker - Action Against Hunger

Calum Coker is a Public Fundraising Officer at the charity Action Against Hunger. He started out as a volunteer fundraiser himself, before progressing to leadership roles within his university’s fundraising arm, Carnival RAG. Since beginning his career as a professional fundraiser less than 2 years ago, Calum has tirelessly sought to use his leadership and team management experience to contribute to improvement of the student fundraising sector as a whole. He sits on the shadow committee of the National Student Fundraising association, a collection of charity and university professionals supporting student fundraising leaders. In his role at Action Against Hunger he offers guidance, motivation and fundraising expertise of the highest standard to our student supporters, leading to both an increase in participant retention and income. His dedication to empowering and inspiring the next generation of fundraisers is making waves, not just for Action Against Hunger and the student fundraising community, but for the sector as a whole.

Helen Lam - CLIC Sargent

Helen broke into the third sector and her first fundraising role in February 2019 and has had a positive impact on CLIC Sargent in this time.

Within 6 weeks she used her transferrable skillset to win a £20k partnership with John Lewis (Oxford Street) and went on to galvanise a £17,000 gift in kind from the partnership for our Home from Home, and oversaw Childhood Cancer Awareness Month imagery displayed on their windows, generating awareness that would usually cost thousands. Helen has played an integral part in CLIC Sargent’s induction programme for all new starters across the organisation and has and uses this opportunity to network map to identify warm leads. The Finance team were inspired and motivated and set themselves a £10k target for the year!

Helen really embodies CLIC Sargent's organisational values;

I am brave. I am confident. I have integrity. I am Team CLIC Sargent

Naomi Tomlinson - Suzy Lamplugh Trust

Naomi has been employed by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust since June 2019. Since her arrival at the Trust, she has been central to the organisation raising £1.2m through large and complex bids to increasing our public fundraising and social media awareness. In the short period she has been with us, she has been instrumental in creating a diversified income stream and significantly supporting the objectives of our work.

Sasha Mathias - Maggie's

Sasha Mathias is a successful, innovative fundraiser who inspires others with her passion, thoughtfulness and has already delivered significant success in her first three years of fundraising. Having joined and supported a team in 2017 she has already been promoted to Centre Fundraising Manager at Maggie’s Merseyside where she manages staff, volunteers and our board. Sasha has increased fundraising year on year including personally organising a hugely popular, high profile event which brought in new supporters and high profile celebrities. She undoubtedly has the potential to go far in fundraising and build on her incredible early success.