Increase your confidence to launch brilliant new fundraising campaigns quickly
Unlock your potential to lead innovation with confidence. Our Academy equips you with practical tools, processes, and frameworks to bring your ideas to life and adapt along the way.
The Charity Fundraising Innovation is a fully immersive learning experience that focuses on a live, deep-dive fundraising innovation case study.
With experiential engagement that will take you from Insight-led Proposition Design to Prototyping Ideas with speed and resource efficiency, this is for anyone who wants to understand the full Innovation Cycle process from start to finish. Whether you must launch new fundraising ideas, improve current products, or test and prototype ideas.
Over 4 Workshop sessions, you will receive practical end-to-end process training with tools, approaches, and methodologies tailored to charity environments.
Details - When is it and how much?
4 x full-day learning experiences spread over 6 weeks
5th February 2025, 9.30 am - 4.30 pm Virtual
26th February, 2025, 9.30 am - 4.30 pm Virtual
12th March, 2025, 9.30 am - 4.30 pm Virtual
26th March 2025, 9.30 am - 5 pm In person, Plexal, Here East London Olympic Park
Full price £1,995 (+VAT) per person.
Accredited certification
24 hours of taught sessions and group project work
You’ll receive licensed use of all Flying Cars Innovation Tools and a Workbook - with all of the most important parts of the training course - including tips, tools and frameworks to keep for future use.
All modules are CPD accredited
The teaching reaches a strict set of standards and is of a high quality for you, the learner.
Topics & dates
Masterclass 1 - How to prepare your innovation project and create insight virtual - 5th February 2025
What is innovation? Redefine the Brief, Readying your Organisation, Goal Map, Audience, and Stakeholder buy-in
Insight 101. How to conduct insight for fundraising innovation
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Masterclass 2 - How to use insight for ideation using Springboards virtual - 26th February 2025
Using insight in ideas generation - How to create springboards, using AI for insight creation
Audience insight-led Ideation facilitation, how to generate divergent ideas that work for your audience
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Masterclass 3 - How to iterate, pivot and prototype ideas virtual - 12th March 2025
How to iterate and pivot fundraising ideas and build extension propositions. Introduction to Idea schematics, Flying Cars idea pivoting tool
Prototyping - How to prototype anything in the right way - learn what, how and when to prototype
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Masterclass 4 - How to sell ideas, gain buy-in and launch ideas in person - 26th March 2025
Getting buy-in to ensure smooth delivery, how to present winning ideas
The big sell - storytelling 7 steps - getting internal buy-in
Social: drinks, nibbles and chat
Participants will be placed in experiential teams during the course to work on a live practical brief
How do I pay?
You can pay online here
2. By invoice - email henry@flyingcarsinnovation.com to request
Dear Fundraising Innovator (experienced, newbie, or somewhere in the middle),
Imagine really understanding how to plan, execute, pivot and prototype that brilliant idea in your head.
Having the skills to launch a new insight-led campaign so your charity can raise a lot more money.
Instead of feeling worn down, frustrated and out of energy - you convince your boss to invest consistently in innovation
You regularly launch ideas quickly, learn fast and pivot
Your whole organisation supports innovation and learning is valued over short-term results
Launching ideas that deliver and win
We know by speaking to people every day doing brilliant fundraising that confidence around running innovation sprints and cycles is low.
When you have know-how and confidence you feel like you can do anything. Without it - everything feels like a major problem that overwhelms you.
When people attend our innovation training they tell us their confidence has been transformed. They can lead their teams and others through a product development process with the knowledge and tools needed to succeed and launch. ⬇️
How will I learn?
Theory is important to understand the why
But for the how - real live briefs are better
Each project team will be assigned to a live brief. Real issues real organisations are working through
You'll work in small teams of peers throughout the programme and be working on a live brief from a small charity.
We'll finish with an in-person pitch event to senior innovation experts. Afterwards, there will be a social event and graduation party.
Three of the four sessions will be virtual - over Zoom and using Mural to co-create and collaborate.
The fourth session will be in person. 🥳
We will finish with a pitch afternoon in East London, where you present your ideas to some of the great and good from the Fundraising & Innovation world, and a graduation party at the end. Mortar boards are entirely optional.
Why should you learn from us?
We live and breathe innovation daily.
✅ We have launched campaigns and appeals that have raised hundreds of millions of pounds and recruited hundreds of thousands of new supporters for some amazing global charities and nonprofits
✅ We have worked at charities in-house and innovated. We have felt the pain of:
❌ Sign-off on campaigns being 20+ people
❌ 6 month lead-in times for internal marketing, digital and data support
❌ No culture of failure and experimentation - everything must work!
❌ Never enough time or budget to innovate
❌ Support for innovation being removed
❌ Moving too slowly to get to market
❌ Decisions stuck in endless committees
❌ Never launching any products
We have experienced all of your difficulties, and we know how to overcome them. We’ll teach you everything we know to 10x your innovation outputs.
Read what past clients say about working with us below on our Wall of Love ⬇️
Announcing - The Flying Cars Innovation Academy
Most people have hundreds of ideas they want to test. They need to innovate but don’t know how to start or what to do.
We will teach you.
You’ll learn how to:
Create the most important pillars for success
Create an ambitious Goal Map that sets the vision and success criteria
Getting Senior stakeholder buy-in
Identifying the right target audience
Uncover Insight for fundraising innovation
Insight 101 - tools and techniques for successful insight generation
Pains and gains your audience have
Conduct real audience insight yourself
Develop needs statements and How Might We’s
Ideate inclusively
Using insight in ideas generation - How to create springboards
Using AI for insight and ideas development
Ideation facilitation with techniques for introverts and extroverts
Group work versus silent work
Where to find stimulus and what stimulus to use
Pivot and iterate any fundraising idea
Build extension propositions
How to identify assumptions
Use Assumptions maps to prioritise order of test
Access the Flying Cars Idea Schematic
Get buy-in from senior stakeholders
Ensure smooth delivery
How to present winning ideas that convince
Create a winning pitch
Our accredited course will give you everything you need to run full product development cycles and sprints yourself in the future full of confidence
Is The Charity Innovation Academy for you?
In the past we have taught:
Innovation Managers
Product Managers
Product Development Managers
Mass Participation Fundraisers
Individual Giving Teams
Heads of Innovation
Events Managers
Heads of Service Design
For-purpose start up founders
The Innovation curious
How many of these sound familiar?
You want to be seen as a great fundraiser
You enjoy up-skilling in a way that balances proven expertise with a fun, fast-paced style
To you, innovation right now means lots of ideas but no time or budget to get them live. You want to change that
You know there is a better way to innovate but you don’t know how to just yet
Meet the Tutors
Your Course Tutors have many years experience in Innovation, Insight and Fundraising
Your FAQ’s answered
Who is the Academy for?
The Academy is designed for anyone working in charities who wants to innovate or manage teams who innovate using a systematic approach. The innovation techniques we teach are simple but nuanced. Great for beginners but also sophisticated enough for seasoned innovation professionals.
How do I pay?
You can pay online here
2. By invoice - email henry@flyingcarsinnovation.com and request the
desired number of seats in the Academy
Why is innovation so important?
70% of organisations do not have innovation embedded in their strategy and culture.
In a rapidly changing world where fundraising is struggling to keep up, innovation can give you and your organisation an essential advantage.
Learn from people who have worked charity-side for decades and understand your needs, wants and frustrations in Innovation.
Who are you? Why should we learn from you?
We have worked in teams raising hundreds of millions of pounds for leading charities.
We are innovation and fundraising experts with over 20 years of experience in the core teaching team.
We have a wealth of happy clients and work with large, medium and small charity and for-purpose brands globally such as Macmillan, Cancer Council, Asthma & Lung UK, Dementia UK, Battersea, Dogs Trust, International Rescue Committee and many more
What will I learn?
The full set of tools you need to innovate in an audience-led way from start to finish.
Specifically:
Redefine your Innovation Brief
Identify your target audience
Involve key stakeholders
Create audience insight
Generate audience-led ideas from that insight
Run inclusive and extensive ideation sessions
Audience Co-creation
Prototype any idea quickly, cheaply and easily
The Flying Cars Idea Schematic to pivot any campaign
Validate or invalidate key assumptions
Can I take just one module?
Attending all 4 sessions teaches you the skills you need to run a comprehensive innovation cycle. Each session will use learnings from previous sessions.
What materials do I get?
You will receive a workbook upfront with all the tools, templates and insights used in the Masterclass session. You will also get licensed use of Flying Cars tools ongoing
Is this in person? Or virtual?
There are 3 virtual sessions and one in person at the end of the programme so we can meet face-to-face and celebrate your learning journey!
How long are the masterclasses?
Sessions are 9-4 pm - with 6 hours of taught material and group work each day