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My role: Fundraising and Publicity officer


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When Michelle asked me to write a short article on the ins and outs of being Fundraising and Publicity Officer for OCV you can imagine I leapt at the chance – everyone needs to know about the dramatic thrills and split second decision-making requirements of being in this role for OCV. Well perhaps this is only in my daydreams sitting over a cup of tea out on task with OCV, but this role is pretty important to the running of OCV over the year and hopefully it is working well!

The Fundraising and Publicity Officer is a combination of two earlier roles in OCV. On the fundraising side I am responsible for finding out about new funding opportunities, liaising with organisations who may award us money and completing all the paperwork to apply for grants and funding. We have recently been applying for a number of different funding opportunities; in March we were successful in obtaining funding for the current series of training weekends. Often we work through Oxfordshire Nature Conservation Forum who provide contacts for donors and grants. In terms of the publicity side of my work I try to keep tabs on advertising opportunities we may be able to use, create displays and flyers for conferences and fairs we may be present at, and write the adverts for all the residential trips that are offered through the year.

So as you can see the job is quite big and involves working with lots of other people within OCV. I’ve only been in this post since December 2007 and actually only started volunteering with OCV in October 2007 (obviously far too enthusiastic!) but I have had some experience of fundraising for charities before. In one of my past jobs I was the Senior Warden for an educational heritage centre based on the Dorset coast and was involved in day-to-day management of fundraising while also being involved in applying for a large-scale Heritage Lottery Grant to renovate the centre. Pretty good training for fundraising for OCV and I’m also a dab hand at identifying fossils if you ever need someone!

Hopefully you now have a better idea of what the Fundraising and Publicity Officer does. I really enjoy my role as it is really interesting pulling all the information for applications together and it is also really satisfying when we are successful. It can take quite a lot of time to do the groundwork and I’m always grateful if people see fundraising or publicity opportunities and let me know about them, as I can’t keep tabs on everything at once!

Kate Bone

Return to Weasel Summer 2008