Making the Ask: The artful science of high-value fundraising

If you’re a fundraiser or social entrepreneur keen to secure large gift for any kind of social cause you need to be able to ask the right people for the right money in the right way. But how do you do that?

In this ground-breaking book, global experts Bernard Ross and Clare Segal share their approach - used by major fundraising organisations from UNHCR in the Middle East to MSF in the US and from UK’s Oxford University to MEF Museum in Argentina – which has been used to secure gifts up to $110m in a single ask.

Whether you’re an experienced fundraiser looking for new ideas, a newbie keen to get to the right approach fast, or a board member anxious to help out, you’ll find the answers you’re looking for inside. The book also has a special social bonus - every copy you buy will result in a donation to the WHO foundation to pay for a Covid 19 vaccine in a developing nation. “One reasonably useful book = one life-saving vaccine.”

Bernard Ross is a co-director of =mc consulting, www.managementcentre.co.uk, a management consultancy working worldwide for ethical organisations.
He co-authored Breakthrough Thinking for Non-Profit Organisations with Clare Segal which received the Terry McAdam Award for Best Non-Profit Book in the USA 2004.
The Influential Fundraiser was nominated as one of the top 5 ‘must read’ non-profit books in the New York Times online in 2009. Most recently Global Fundraising, edited with Penny Cagney, won the Skystone Prize for Research and was published in China in 2018 by Shanghai University Press. Strategy was published by the Financial Times/Pearson in January 2016.
With Omar Mahmoud, Head of Global Knowledge at UNICEF International he wrote Change for Good- behavioural economics for a better world, published by semioscreation/=mc in March 2018.
With his talented colleagues at =mc he has created global strategies for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, WHO, Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, and UNICEF international. As a fundraiser he’s raised money to refurbish France’s most famous monument, for a museum to house the world’s largest dinosaur in Argentina, and to save the last 800 great apes in Africa.

Clare Segal is a co-director of =mc consulting.

Her key areas of expertise are communications and personal coaching for charity and NGO leaders. She has pioneered writing high impact fundraising cases using psychological insights for a number of leading charities in the environmental, child protection and healthcare areas. These cases have transformed the impact of charity communications for major donors. Among the charities she has helped are NSPCC, WWF, Save the Children, UNICEF International and the Alzheimer’s Society.

She co-authored Breakthrough Thinking for Non-Profit Organisations with Bernard Ross which won the Terry McAdam Award for Best Non Profit Book in the USA 2004 - the only time Europeans have won this award. Also with Bernard Ross she has co-authored a number of books most recently The Strategy Workout, part of the prestigious Business Gym Series published by Pearson, 2016.

Prior to setting up =mc she was an award-winning video producer and director winning ‘Best Community Video’ award twice in the UK for multi-media work on sexism and volunteering.