Lara Rufus is the Director and Proprietor of Crowne Consultancy.
She is currently working at L.B. Newham, where she is the External Funding lead. Prior to this she worked at the National Lottery Community Fund where she was the Funding Manager covering North and East London for 4.5 years, managing a team of Funding Officers and a grant budget of £20m.
- She has over 15 years of extensive experience in fundraising.
- Her experience includes working for mainstream charities such as; Age UK, the Children's Society, Central YMCA, and Livability to locally embedded grass root charities like the Bromley by Bow Centre, where she was the Statutory Development Manager, raising over £2.5m over 2 years.
- She also has worked for Greenwich Council helping capacity build small groups in Greenwich and enabling them to become competent in the art of fundraising.
She has a wealth of experience working as a Fundraising Consultant, mainly for church-based initiatives. She has pioneered many fundraising seminars. She is one of the founding members and visionary of the Institute of Fundraising’s BlackFundraiser's Network, since its inception in 2006.
Lara saw the network grow to well over 700 members.
Lara has done various courses in fundraising and has completed an MSc in charity Fundraising and Marketing at South Bank University.
She developed the Trust and Statutory Funding Strategy for Premier Christian Media Trust. She was a columnist for the Keep the Faith Magazine for several years, where she wrote a monthly column for charities entitled ‘Charity Affairs’.