In November 2023, six team members from the Development Office at Karolinska Institute (KI) in Sweden embarked on a trip to the U.K. to seek inspiration from a broad range of nonprofit organisations and educational institutions.
Here, Jenny Löhr, Director and Camilla Sjögren, Case Manager of KI reflect on their trip:
Jenny Löhr: For the last couple of years, our work has been focused on or affected by the pandemic. After this intense time, we wanted to both recharge and restart our work in the Development Office, so as we slowly transitioned into a more normal work routine during the early months of 2023 the idea of making an inspirational trip began to surface again.
Camilla Sjögren: I must give all credit to Jenny for having the great idea to reach out to the CASE London Office for advice on our trip. If I remember correctly her words were “CASE knows everyone!”.
Since we, as a medical university, often co-publish with Imperial College London, King’s College London and Oxford University we were hoping to reach out to one or two of them, but with an email from CASE, we suddenly had an invitation to meet all of three of their Development Offices, which truly was a highlight of the trip.
We also felt that we should try to see and meet with as many different fundraising entities as possible so one of our benefactors kindly helped us to connect with some non-profit organisations and I also emailed others to ask for an introductory chat and tour.
You met with colleagues from institutions outside of the medical field, what new perspectives did they bring to your inspiration gathering?
Jenny: At the Wellcome Collection and library we found great inspiration on how to curate and present the scientific equipment, books and tools that our university has collected over the last two hundred years, as well as on how to make it accessible, not just for the scientific community, but for the general public too.
At the National Portrait Gallery, we saw how they fantastically combined function and creativity in their fundraising, which gave us some clever naming ideas, and Tommy’s charity showed us how to make smaller donations reach further.
Finally, we had lunch with the lovely and very inspiring Jane Hatch from Cancer Research UK who kindly shared ideas and thoughts for the future.
Why did you choose to take all the members of your team with you?
Jenny: As a team, we are a close-knit unit and whilst we all have our specialities, we do work together on projects the majority of the time, so I wanted the entire team to be inspired and energised!
Camilla: Practically, bringing the whole team also helped make sure we didn’t miss any important details! Despite all being fairly fluent in English, we haven’t had that much practice since the pandemic and found that British people do tend to speak fast when talking about a subject they’re passionate about!
How did your trip end up benefitting the team?
Jenny: During our visit, we did a bit of benchmarking, and while all of these great universities do outperform us in many aspects of fundraising, we realised that we’re not as far behind as we originally thought. Whilst we, and other Scandinavian universities, might never have the same resources as some British universities, the trip gave a boon to our self-confidence and confirmation that we are doing good work with the resources and the staff that we do have.
We’re very grateful to everyone who took time out of their day to meet with us!
What would you say to anyone who may be considering reaching out to neighbouring institutions or further afield for inspiration?
Camillia: If you have a chance to make a study visit somewhere, grab that chance with both hands and start running. You don’t even have to go very far, even just meeting with a neighbouring university or a museum in your own city can be a great opportunity to spend time with your colleagues outside the office.
If you plan a trip further away do reach out to the CASE team in London, they were beyond helpful and helped us set up meetings with exactly the people we wanted to see the most.