Our fourth SOFII star of the month is…

Nathalie Robinson

Our tribute to this month’s SOFII hero, Nathalie Robinson, really writes itself. All we have to do is to list a summary of her achievements since she joined SOFII only a bit more than a year ago.

Carolina Herrera, SOFII’s stalwart project manager based in Singapore, sums up Nathalie’s considerable contribution.

‘During a short time Nathalie helped us achieve a lot. The content on the site has grown consistently, SOFII has introduced many new reading rooms and new blog entries. She’s ‘put us in order’ by creating a regular schedule of updates and ensuring we meet our deadlines. She’s established our charity subscription and monthly donor schemes, managed and developed our business partner scheme, has mastered (or soon will) our Raiser’s Edge and Net Community database tools provided by Blackbaud, inspired our growing pool of volunteers and, well, much more besides. Throughout Nathalie has always remained friendly and bubbly, despite all the difficulties SOFII threw at her.’

The picture above shows Nathalie at SOFII’s Burn’s night celebration on the shores of Loch Ness in January of this year when, in addition to looking after a number of unruly SOFII sponsors Nathalie was also required to deliver the demanding ‘toast from the lassies’. Which she did of course with great professionalism, much style and terrific good humour.

Nathalie is now moving on to take up new challenges as fundraising manager for St Christopher’s Fellowship, in south London, and we wish her well in this demanding new role. The good news is that she continues to work with SOFII in a new voluntary role, as a member of SOFII’s board of trustees. Nathalie will be a safe pair of hands guiding SOFII, which as you know is an increasingly important and appreciated project for tens of thousands of fundraisers around the world. She can still be reached at nathalie@sofii.org.

Our third SOFII star of the month is…

Marie Burnett, director,The White Lion Press Limited.

She’s known to customers of her company, The White Lion Press Limited, as ‘the extremely helpful Marie’, and not without reason. For SOFII, Marie is a volunteer who keeps very much in the background, yet most of the words that appear on the SOFII site pass through her hands. And it’s just as well that they do, for Marie is a stickler for house-style, a pedant for correct grammar and punctuation, a scourge of jargon, obfuscation and gobble-de-gook and a champion of clarity, fine writing, plain English and the precise use of words. In short, she is custodian of the quality of all of the writing on SOFII and for the hours she spends in that role, all fundraisers should be grateful.

Any mistakes found in this special SOFII feature are of course the fault of someone other than Marie, for this is one piece of writing that she would never, ever allow.

Our second SOFII star of the month is…

Kimberley MacKenzie, 

development director, Ontario Nature.

What can we say about someone who has the strength and team spirit of a lioness, the unswerving solidity and timeless dependability of a rather special mountain and the rich depths and seemingly inexhaustible capacity of the world’s most productive diamond mine?

That’s Mount Kimberley, Milford Sound, New Zealand in the background, better known as the Lion Mountain. Next to it is the Kimberley diamond mine in South Africa, the world’s richest source of the world’s most precious gems. In the foreground is our star of the month Kimberley MacKenzie. We think these images are rather apt metaphors for our Kimberley, a jewel among volunteers and tireless Canadian ambassador for SOFII.

Kimberley was an early SOFII adopter, one of the very first. She immediately spotted the promise and potential value of the SOFII idea, particularly for lone or small-shop fundraisers working in isolation. She’s devoted herself tirelessly to advancing SOFII’s cause ever since. It’s no exaggeration to say that without Kimberley’s guiding hand on our small but crucial fundraising efforts, SOFII would not have survived.

So thanks a million Kimberley, on behalf of thousands and thousands of fundraisers, SOFII’s growing band of enthusiasts worldwide.

You can find out more about Kimberley by visiting her blog here.

Our first SOFII star of the month is…

John Lepp, Agents of Good

The SOFII team were unanimous – the first SOFII star of the month had to be awarded to John Lepp. Over the past year, John has shown such dedication, patience and expertise in building the new SOFII site. All of us from SOFII are very grateful to all of his hard work and we are really pleased with our new website!

John has long been an admirer of SOFII. He loved the idea that there was an online, ever-evolving museum of fundraising which he could access, at anytime. However, John freely admits that he found SOFII difficult to use because of the overload of links and images. Instead of merely complaining about the problem, John decided to do something about it. Realising he and his business partner Mark Haak had the skills to completely redesign SOFII and improve its functionality; he got in touch with SOFII’s founder Ken Burnett and offered his services. 

Ever since, John and the team at Agents of Good have undertaken a massive project (bigger than any of us realised) involving sweat, blood and tears and undoubtedly a good few curses along the way. Despite this, John has approached the project with superhero-like patience, commitment and determination. His light hearted approach and acceptance of our technical limitations made him a joy to work with. 

So, thank you John for believing in SOFII and for playing such an important role in shaping the future of fundraising. We really needed your talents and are very lucky that you decided to share them with us.

And special thanks to….

Dean Reeds for all of his hard work and patience with the new website – we couldn’t have done it without you.