The National Fundraising Awards were established in 2008 by The Wheel, a national support and representative body for community and voluntary organisations, and Fundraising Ireland, a network for fundraisers, with generous support from the Vodafone Ireland Foundation .

These Awards have been created to recognise, celebrate and promote excellence in the profession of fundraising, which too often is on the receiving end of 'bad press' from the media, the public and also within charitable organisations themselves. We believe that fundraising is a very honourable profession and fundraisers enable support to be provided to the poor, vulnerable and excluded; culture and the arts; preservation of heritage; provision of social services and much, much more.

 With the forthcoming charity regulation and its accompanying 'regulation of fundraising through codes of practice' process, additional focus will be placed on the practice of fundraising within organisations. We welcome the additional transparency this will inevitably bring and we feel that the time is now right for an Awards programme to promote excellence in fundraising in Ireland.  

The nominations process for these awards is now closed.  The awards will be announced at a special ceremony in the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin in the early evening of October 20th 2009.


Winners of the awards in the inaugural year of 2008 were as follows:

Fundraiser of the Year 2008:        

• Peter Ireton of Bóthar

Campaign of the year 2008

• Small organisations: Legacy Promotion Ireland
• Large Organisations: Concern

Volunteer Fundraiser of the Year 2008:

• Maureen Forrest, The Hope Foundation
• Caroline Downey, Exploration Station

These awards are an annual event and we welcome interest from any sponsoring organisations to come on board and help us develop this positive news story for fundraising in Ireland.