“ Fundraising innovation training at its best”

Flying Cars Innovation Academy.


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

  • 11th September 2024, 9.30 am - 4.30 pm Virtual

  • 25th September, 2024, 9.30 am - 4.30 pm Virtual

  • 2nd October, 2024, 9.30 am - 4.30 pm Virtual

  • 16th October 2024, 9.30 am - 5 pm In person, Plexal, Here East London Olympic Park

Full price £1,995 (+VAT) per person.

Early Bird £1,795 (+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

Topics & dates

Masterclass 1 - How to prepare your innovation project and create insight virtual - 11th September 2024

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 - 25th September 2024

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 - 2nd October 2024

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 - 16th October 2024

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?

  1. 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?

  1. 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