Not your typical fundraiser

Rich risks office ridicule to explain why he is not a typical Greenpeace fundraiser in his submission to our office blog relay, but he's big enough to handle it. Click here to catch up on the other entries to our office blog relay, a whistle-stop tour of Greenpeace staff here in the UK.

Most people who end up as fundraisers put a lot of time and effort in to steering their career in that direction. You could say that I kind of fell in to it.

After getting bored with trying to promote upper-class removals and shipping for a living, I was lucky enough to get a big break with a large cancer charity that I'd applied to on a whim. Five years later and here I am, entrenched in the non-profit sector and working for Greenpeace. What happened?

You see, as a Tory voting, public school educated, rugby player, working for an environmental organisation is not a natural fit. But in many ways this helps me to do my job, running Greenpeace's supporter recruitment programme. Over the years I have become more and more convinced that something needs to be done in order to prevent us from catastrophically damaging our environment. Future disasters of this kind are not something I'm happy to let my son's generation deal with.

Having my mind focussed on these issues has given me great insight in to the sort of things that we need to be speaking to our supporters about, and how we should be doing it too. I can understand why some people might be sceptical, and I feel that my experience does me no harm in trying to convince potential supporters otherwise.

My job in a nutshell is about selling the promise of a better world to people who may not have even noticed there is a problem. I have to make sure that Greenpeace continues to persuade lots of people to become new financial supporters that will allow us to continue to campaign on subjects like climate change or overfishing (to name just two examples).

Some of the methods that we use to recruit supporters are nearly as controversial as our direct actions - street fundraising being a favourite that is often picked on by some members of the public. But I can think of no better way of getting people, who perhaps like me need a bit of convincing, to buy in to the Greenpeace ethos than by having a proper chat with them about it!