Fundraisers from 42 countries attend IFC Online
IFC Online – the world’s first international virtual fundraising conference – attracted around 1,800 delegates from 399 organisations in 42 countries.
The inaugural IFC Online – staged by the Resource Alliance – was held on 12-14 May 2009. Focusing on digital fundraising, it featured presentations by the world’s leading digital fundraising experts.
Most of the organisations represented at IFC Online were national-based NGOs (182 out of 399 – 46%). A further 16% (63) were INGOs. Just 17 per cent (66) were from suppliers or consultancies. There were also delegates from schools, universities, hospitals, health foundations and arts organisations.
Most ‘site registrations’ came from the USA – 176 of the 399 attending organisations being based there – with a further 67 from Canada and 33 from the UK. Other countries represented included Austria, El Salvador, Philippines, China, Brazil, Bangladesh, Turkey, Slovakia, Norway and Ghana.
A key feature of the event was the number of groups attending worldwide – with many organisations taking up the pre-publicity offer of broadcasting the event into meeting rooms so entire staff teams could participate. One booking from Israel resulted in more than 70 fundraisers from Jerusalem watching the conference together.
The ratio of men to women attending the conference was 1:3, while for 49% of delegates, this was the first time they had participated in an online event.
Many of the sessions attracted more than 250 delegates, with the plenary by Scott Goodstein – the Obama campaign’s external online director – scoring the highest number of people tuning in at more than 500 people.
Delegate feedback has been extremely positive. Sixty-seven per cent of delegates rated the conference as either very good or excellent, and 99 per cent said they would consider returning to the next edition of IFC Online, to be held in 2010.
“The first IFC Online has been a fantastic success,” says Alan Bird, director of marketing and communications at the Resource Alliance. “By reaching so many organisations in so many countries, IFC Online demonstrated the potential of a virtual conference to take Resource Alliance’s training and development messages into the nooks and crannies of the global fundraising community.
“There were more than 250 delegates attending many of our sessions, which is up to five times the number we would get at a physical site conference. The economies of staging a physical conference mean we have to offer sessions side by side, so forcing delegates to choose between them. We have no such restrictions with a virtual conference, where delegates can attend every session with no clashes.
“I was also surprised that we seemed to have three times as many female delegates as male delegates. Even though we see similar gender differences at out regular conferences – because there are more women than men working in fundraising – we wondered if digital fundraising might attract a proportionately larger male audience. It appears however that the early adopters of virtual training are predominantly female.”
The Resource Alliance plans to stage IFC Online again in 2010. The conference theme and programme will be announced in due course.
Delegate statistics were provided by Learning Times, an online community for American training professionals, which RA had engaged to host the conference website. All sessions (except Scott Goodstein’s plenary) were recorded. Access to the video archive is available for US$99. Contact Kristina Fitzpatrick (kristina@resourcealliance.org) for further details. Full programme details can still be found at www.learningtimes.net/ifconline and at www.fundraisingonline.com.
