A Conversation on Integrated Marketing and Fundraising, Part 1

We're going to start as agencies, and competitive agencies, to collaborate on foundational research and foundational thinking to fill in gaps and to create something that the NGO sector can use — and this isn't going to be ultimately successful and transformative without us opening up the conversation over time. We want people collaborating, co-editing, pouring lots of material into this place beyond the initial agencies getting good material up, starting to build the foundation. Then we want to stimulate, engage and pour in lots and lots of different participants into this over time. That means we've got to do it right at the beginning, but everyone takes responsibility of this over time.

FS: How vital is collaboration in the sector, especially in this day and age?
MJ: We're hoping that our collaboration is going to set an example — we're not going to teach others how to collaborate — but that NGOs see that they too can do this. I've been doing this almost 25 years in fundraising, and I seem to see a lot of organizations tightening up and being very proprietary. They used to share more. That seems to be running counter to what you see in other verticals. In science research and development and other commercial areas, there's more collaboration, and in some ways I see less collaboration in our sector. So I hope this is a good example and starts to get NGOs thinking they can collaborate on knowledge development in integrated marketing, let alone other areas.