Hayley Chalmers joined the University of Sheffield’s Individual Giving Team four years ago. Her current role as Donor Experience Manager sees her concentrate on stewardship communications that ensure supporters of Sheffield receive the recognition they deserve. Hayley has a marketing and communications background with a particular interest in understanding audiences and writing copy that brings fundraising to life.

Kathy Chamberlain is a Development Officer at Swansea University. Her core areas are regular giving and donor stewardship. In 2022, she delivered the University’s first donor thank you day (Diolch Day). In a previous life, she taught English and Creative Writing and completed her postgraduate studies at Swansea. She moved there in 2011 ‘for a year’ and hasn’t left yet.

Laura’s obsessed with data analysis, decision science and perfecting the supporter experience. She is currently learning about the fascinating world of Neuro-fundraising. At DMS, Laura has turned insights into technically innovative and emotionally rich supporter journeys for a myriad of charities including The Children’s Trust, World Vision and has introduced the British Heart Foundation to innovative new techniques to power their new product development.

Rosie has worked in higher education fundraising for over 20 years and is a partner at More Partnership, having previously been both head of development services, and head of regular giving and stewardship at the University of Bristol. She co-developed More Partnership's award-winnger Regular Giving Insight and Benchmarking project and has provided analysis and strategic reviews to over 40 UK and Irish universities, 18 Oxford colleges, and 8 Australian universities.

Her areas of expertise are in regular and leadership giving, donor stewardship, benchmarking, direct marketing, telephone fundraising, donor journey planning, database management, and analytics. She is a strategic manager and forward thinker who has combined donor-centred approaches with data driven strategies to successfully grow regular and leadership giving programmes, focus engagement activities and build long-term donor loyalty.

Steven is an experienced researcher with 25 years in the field, primarily working with charities in the UK, Europe, and Australia, and ex-chair of the Institute of Fundraising’s Insight Committee.

He leads the qualitative research at Beautiful Insights, a full-service market research agency who specialise in creating insight to support fundraising decisions. Their ‘Third Thursday’ market tracker regularly probes key fundraising issues, helping clients stay close to supporters.

Paul is Alumni Giving Manager at the University of Nottingham. After receiving a phone call from a student himself, he began his fundraising life as a Telethon manager in 2010, leading a team of 70+ students.

With over 20 Telethons, lots of chats with alumni and students and now Nottingham’s first ever Giving Day behind him, he’s always ready to share insight on fundraising and relationship building. His favourite band is the Ramones and he can play along to some of their songs.

A digital marketing and communications professional with 12 years' experience, Tom has worked in the University of Nottingham’s development office for the last six years. Now focused on connecting with the University’s global alumni community through digital channels, Tom has recently led the communications planning and delivery for the University’s first ever (and very successful *spoiler alert*) Giving Day.

Like any modern creative professional, Tom has an overdeveloped passion for speciality coffee. When not at work he can be found in one of Nottingham’s many cafes, walking his dogs or at the local CrossFit gym.

As well as being an experienced agency lead, Kate has delivered hugely successful, multi-media fundraising programmes for the Universities of Leeds and Birmingham as well as charities as diverse as IFAW, Macmillan, Red Cross and Greenpeace. Kate can confidently guide charities and the Higher Education sector to help them develop new propositions, shape and deliver granular data insights as well as develop supporter journeys to maximise the opportunities to engage.

Beginning fundraising in 2015 as a student telephone fundraiser for the University of Leeds, Jessica has gone on to manage their Regular and Leadership Giving Programme – overseeing the generation and dispersal of gifts up to £25,000. She leads a team who manages direct marketing, digital, as well as telephone fundraising appeals. Developing Leeds’ acquisition and retention strategies, her role is to ensure that supporters are at the core of fundraising and stewardship appeals, from data selection to copy production, creating a caring, coherent and consistent donor experience.

Tom started his fundraising career in the charity sector working for the likes of Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and Prostate Cancer UK. During his time in the charity sector Tom specialised in regular giving acquisition and new product development. Four years ago, Tom made the move into Higher Education to head up the University of York’s Participation Giving Team. Tom was tasked with diversifying York’s programme to maximise the impact of York’s first ever institutional philanthropic campaign.

Tom currently leads a programme that utilises a range of marketing channels including direct mail, telephone fundraising, email, social media, community fundraising, giving days and crowdfunding.

Geoff Savage has worked in fundraising since 2001. Since 2007 he has specialised in university regular giving, managing over 50 telephone campaigns as an agency consultant for a wide range of institutions. In 2014, he was appointed Head of Individual Giving at Aston University, where he oversees in-house Telephone, Direct Mail and Crowdfunding campaigns.

Emma has worked in higher education fundraising for almost ten years and is currently Head of Regular Giving at London School of Economics. Prior to this, Emma worked within Oxford University, most recently as Deputy Director of Development at St Catherine’s College. She’s passionate about the transformative effect of education and how regular giving can help institutions achieve this.

Lloyd started as a student telethon caller before joining the Development Office at Aberystwyth University to deliver the telethon. He then moved to Lincoln College, Oxford, in 2015 before heading to the University of Bristol a year later to take on the Telephone Fundraising Manager’s role. Lloyd is now a Philanthropy Manager in charge of implementing a Leadership Giving programme.

Rachel Spencer is a telefundraising expert and alumni engagement enthusiast. Over the last decade she has graduated from student caller, to professional tele-fundraiser, to campaign manager and beyond. In her present role at VanillaSoft she lends her experience to more than 100 universities around the world on a wide variety of primarily telephone-based outreach campaigns. In previous roles she has managed teams of 40 telephone fundraisers, worked with the likes of Oxfam, Unicef, NSPCC and Cancer Research UK, and set telephone campaign records from the most funds raised to the best ROI. 

Anna has worked in both the charity sector and higher education fundraising for more than 17 years and currently oversees Imperial College London’s regular giving and legacy giving programmes. Anna has successfully built and grown legacy programmes in a number of organisations and more recently, has developed expertise in regular giving and mid-value fundraising at Imperial. 
 
Her specialisms are multi-channel donor acquisition, upgrade and stewardship to the few and to the many, across all levels of giving. She also has broad experience in face to face fundraising, direct mail and telephone fundraising, supporter journey, database management, events and long-term strategic planning for fundraising programmes. Anna is also accustomed to working with colleagues across all areas of Advancement including fundraising and alumni relations to maximise opportunities for collaboration and a donor centric approach to fundraising.