Our congratulations go out this week to Jennifer Doubell, CFRE and Peter Dalton, CFRE, who have been named 2016 co-recipients of the highly prestigious Arthur Venn Fundraiser of the Year award by the Fundraising Institute Australia (FIA). Doubell and Dalton were presented with their awards at the Fundraisers’ Gala Awards Dinner held 3 March during the 2016 FIA Conference in Melbourne.
Jennifer Doubell, CFRE, who first achieved CFRE certification in 2005, has served as Executive Director at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation in Melbourne, Australia since 2008.
Doubell rediscovered her childhood passion for fundraising in 1990, after beginning her career in social work and criminology. While pursuing a doctorate at the University of New South Wales’s (UNSW) Australian Graduate School of Management, she accepted a part-time position to develop their advancement and alumni relations program and the rest, as they say, is history. From UNSW, Doubell went on to lead fundraising at Wesley Mission and the National Heart Foundation and lead advancement at the University of Sydney before joining the Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation. Doubell shared with Fundraising & Philanthropy Australasia magazine that she is most proud of “building effective teams” and that, she has done. At Peter MacCallum Cancer Foundation Doubell has overseen a transition that “more than quadrupled gross revenue and tripled net income”, earning the foundation 12 FIA awards in the process.
Peter Dalton, CFFE, who first earned his certification in 1994, consults to major Australian charities through his business Fundraising Futures and since 2015 has served as Head of Development at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute.
“A leader of fundraising leaders” is how CFRE International board member and longtime friend and colleague Leo Orland, FFIA, CFRE describes Dalton. Early in his fundraising career Dalton spent six years at Downes, Venn & Associates, learning from his “boss and mentor” Arthur Venn, the man for whom this award is named. “You really need to like people” shares Dalton. “To be driven and passionate and professional all at the same time, and that’s hard to do day-to-day”. It’s these attributes that Dalton believes make a great fundraiser and not only does he exhibit them, he helps others discover how to do the same. He co-presents FIA’s ‘Fundraising Change Leadership’ course and served as FIA national president in 1992. Among Dalton’s many other achievements, as Director of Fundraising at he helped the UK’s Cambridge University Hospitals NSH Foundation Trust to triple income from donations, legacies and pledges. Dalton says, “I learned this from Arthur Venn: He always said people give to people not causes.”
Please join CFRE International in congratulating these two outstanding fundraising professionals on this prestigious honour. Their distinguished leadership in philanthropic fundraising is something to which all fundraisers can aspire. With their credentials, Jennifer and Peter exemplify that CFRE certification represents both a milestone achievement and a career-long commitment to the profession that they lead and the donors and missions that they serve!
