What’s Behind the Precipitous Rise in Donations to this Nonprofit?

What was it that led to a 44 percent year-over-year rise in donations to Alzheimer’s Research UK in 2017? It would have to be the organization’s straightforward Defeating Dementia strategy, which was launched in 2014 to develop a life-changing treatment for dementia by 2025. The state of the science suggested that the goal was ambitious but possible, and so the organization set an overall goal of £100 million in just three-and-a-half years to ensure that lack of funding wouldn’t impede the research.
Ian Wilson, director of fundraising, says, “I think one of the main reasons the charity has grown as it has is that we’ve been very ambitious in terms of the plans that we have, mainly from a scientific perspective.” Wilson says that the organization’s starting point for the campaign was not how much money could be raised, but where they were relative to achieving their mission. “Then we asked how fundraising, communications and other aspects of the organization could underpin that.”