For as long as I've been in fundraising, charities have been looking for the next big thing that will transform their income generation fortunes. If anything, this seems to have got more and more attention over the years. Today, no self-respecting fundraising strategy is missing a major section on innovation and the majority of the bigger and many medium sized charities have innovation teams or departments all industriously searching for new products, services or approaches that will transform their performance.

As a specialist consultancy and executive search agency working with the charity sector, we’ve known for a while that the market for job-hunters has transformed. A rise in flexible working, changing practices around recruitment, and new technologies have altered the way we work, and the process of landing that dream job.

Lately I've been awash with data from organisations big and small - all of whom want to know how they're doing. Inevitably the conversation of benchmarking comes up, especially around the time when we see the results of one of the larger digital studies released. But it's a conversation that I really try and drive people away from and I'll explain why.

We were very fortunate to be at the very first international Face-to-Face Fundraising conference in Vienna last month. I mean Vienna in June with added fundraising, what's not to like?

My time working in the charity sector is slowly inching towards its third decade. There’s a quote by writer Angela Carter that cites nostalgia as being “the vice of the aged”. And as we get “aged”, it’s oh so very easy to shake our heads and mutter that everything was rosier and happier back in the day.