Imogen Ward talks career, role models and rock’n’roll bands with Jenny Ramage

After ten years at Merlin, you’re leaving soon to join Lessons for Life Foundation as chief executive. Why did you decide to make the move?

I’ve been immensely happy at Merlin, but for a while now I’ve wanted to move into more of a leadership role in more of a start-up environment – which does play to my strengths. Lessons for Life Foundation appealed to me because it’s at an early stage of development, is supported by a large multinational cable company – Liberty Global –and works in international aid and development, which is an area I know very well. The potential to grow the charity and have a real impact is huge.

What are the main challenges you’re looking forward to in this new role?

The fact that Lessons for Life is a charity connected to a huge corporate – Liberty Global – means that, culturally, it’s going to be very different. The challenge will be in getting my head around that wider business, seeing which areas to prioritise and looking at how to shape and build the team. Fortunately, I’ve been exposed to the commercial sector throughout my career, so I’ll be able to combine my sector knowledge and my experience working with the commercial world to maximise the support from Liberty Global.

How do you think you can apply the knowledge and skills you’ve gained over the years as a fundraiser and marketer to a chief executive role?

As a fundraiser, you have to have good personal skills, and you have to understand HR, finance and all the organisation’s programmes. So actually being a fundraiser is a very good career route, if you do want to eventually move into that very top role. Any clever fundraising director will make sure they get knowledge across all areas, which will suit them very well for that leadership role. And it’s hugely exciting that there are more and more fundraisers going into those positions.

You achieved a huge amount over the ten years you were at Merlin, most notably increasing the charity’s income & profile considerably. That aside, what one achievement are you most proud of?

One of the things I pride myself on is my ability to identify good leaders – people who will then go on to be pillars of the sector going forward. Ultimately you’re only as good as the staff you’ve got around you, and your ability to identify talent and then build and develop it. We’ve recruited and developed some enormously talented people who are now very well known in the sector.

You also had great success at Merlin in securing media coverage, in particular getting newspaper appeals. What tips would you share for securing free or low-cost space in the media?

Smaller charities should be encouraged to hear that that when Merlin was selected to run appeals with the likes of The Telegraph and The Sunday Times it was a much smaller organisation with very limited public profile. But it didn’t happen overnight, and you mustn’t think you’re suddenly going to get a newspaper appeal just because you’ve put an application in. It’s about building relationships. I think smaller charities can often be much better at doing that. It’s also about selecting those areas of work that are most interesting, and which appeal directly to the demographic of the readers. Fundamentally, you’ve got to make your cause exciting and newsworthy.

You’re a trustee of EIA and Empower. How can being a trustee add to a fundraiser’s skill set?

I think it can contribute enormously. If you are, or are looking to become, a head of fundraising, then being a trustee gives you the ability to understand what boards are looking for and how they make their decisions. It’s also great fun – particularly if you are from a much bigger organisation coming to the board of a smaller organisation, because you can be really hands-on in projects, which in a bigger organisation you might feel more remote from.

You’ve done a lot of work with the commercial sector. When it comes to marketing, what lessons can the charity world learn from corporates?

The commercial sector thrives on innovation and insight, but I think our sector suffers from being quite risk averse, in terms of what we do with our fundraising and communications work. Performance management is also a big one for me – making sure you have really good staff and that they are developed, encouraged and motivated. Poor performance isn’t acceptable in the commercial sector. We in the charity sector should be placing greater priority on how we motivate and performance manage our staff.

Which other fundraising expert has influenced you most?

Can I have more than one? There are three who stand out for me. The first is Margaret Bennett, former fundraising director at WWF and British Red Cross. She taught me all about the business behind fundraising, particularly from a direct marketing point of view. Secondly, Mark Astarita inspired me to take real pride in being a fundraiser and to be assertive about fundraising’s role in charity leadership. Thirdly, Tobin Aldrich at WWF has been very inspiring in the way he’s developed a really integrated department in a very complex organisation, with marketing, fundraising, communications and policy teams all working together.

Imogen Ward is the Chief Executive of the Lessons for Life Foundation

This article first appeared in The Fundraiser magazine, Issue 32, August 2013