Fundraising is often framed around targets and transactions, but at its heart, it’s really about relationships.
In episode three, we explore what it means to build trust-based partnerships between funders and fundraisers, and why honesty, transparency, and long-term thinking matter more than ever. Guests share experiences from philanthropy, corporate fundraising and sector research with practical insights on navigating power dynamics, being transparent and taking risks.
Our speakers and key messages
- Dr Sophia Cooke, Strategic Initiatives Lead, EFN. Sophia is an expert in helping people and organisations take insights from research and put them into practice. She was the driving force behind our new research on improving funder and fundraiser relationships and shares insights on creating trust-based and honest working relationships across the sector.
- Aruna Bahia, Sustainability Lead, Co-op Foundation. Leading Co-op Foundations’s sustainability giving, Aruna brings the funder perspective on creating meaningful relationships with grant partners. She shares how she and her colleagues build authentic relationships and why she advocates for more trust-based philanthropy across the sector.
- Steve Jones, Chief Operating Officer, ORCA. A sub-group leader of the GFF and expert at corporate fundraising, Steve shares how he’s cultivated strong relationships and navigated power dynamics with funders and corporate partners. His insights show how it’s possible to maintain healthy cultures and working relationships, whilst staying true to yourself and your organisation’s values.
- Andy Raingold & Chloe Revill, Co-Founders & Directors, Change in Nature. Andy and Chloe work with people and groups to help them bring nature into their everyday work. Their short nature connection exercise aims to ground us in today’s theme of understanding the bigger picture and how you might want to integrate some of the learnings into our work.
- Your host is Natasha Ratter, Environmental Groups Lead at EFN. Natasha co-ordinates EFN’s work to strengthen the effectiveness of the environmental charity sector and facilitates the Green Fundraiser’s Forum and worked extensively as a fundraiser prior to joining EFN.
Our speakers and key messages
Below we are a list of resources mentioned in this episode that can help you in understanding the bigger picture:
- Increasing the effectiveness of environmental funder-fundraiser relationships by Dr. Sophia Cooke & EFN – this report examines areas of ineffectiveness in the funding landscape, homing in on key issues facing environmental fundraisers. A second report on challenges facing environmental funders will be published later in 2026.
- Key takeaways from our 2025 funder-fundraiser conference by Tara Cooper, EFN – a blog showing what we learnt about funder-fundraiser relationships, the current funding ecosystem and how we can improve it during our latest funder-fundraiser gathering.
- Corporate Fundraising Working Group by the Green Fundraisers Forum & Steve Jones. Any GFF member can join the Corporate Fundraising Working Group and their regular meet ups via the newsletter. The majority of these sessions are not recorded, but we have two previous workshops you can watch now: Corporate fundraising workshop with Steve Jones and Corporate fundraising workshop (second edition) with Steve Jones
- Opening & trusting grantmaking by IVAR – IVAR’s eight commitments that funders can sign up to – calling for funders to adopt more open and trusting practices that make life easier for those they fund.