I won't embarrass her by revealing her identity here, but can vouch for the fact that her award was well merited and thoroughly deserved. I won't say that I was proud of her as my contribution to her career was slight, and her achievements were all her own. But I was extremely pleased for her.

The charity that she works for however, should be proud of her, and moreover they should be extremely proud of themselves. This fundraiser had started with them as a volunteer. Rather than leave her in that position, the charity saw her potential, gave her an opportunity to be employed with them, invested in some training and support and gave her a level of responsibility while she was still relatively inexperienced. The result - more money raised, more donors recruited, more beneficiaries helped, more internal skills developed and a nice award to cap it all.

I've written before about the fundraising profession's need to get fresh, young people entering our world. At Bruce Tait Associates, we operate our Charity Career Start intern scheme to match charities with young people looking to gain experience. It's been a great success and in the last year around 30 people have been on placement with Scottish charities through the programme. None of that is going to help though unless charities take the chance to invest in these young people.

That's why I've been delighted recently to see a handful of Scottish charities recruiting entry-level fundraising posts. Don't underestimate how much a young person can offer a charity, particularly in the fundraising field. For a start they know how social media works, are computer literate to a high level and tend to be very quick at learning things. They are also brave and challenging and it's in those two areas that fundraising can get very, very interesting. There is a lot to be said for doing things the way that they have been done before, by my experience is that excellence in fundraising often involves risk-taking, innovation and challenging the perceived wisdom.

So surround yourselves with young energetic and enthusiastic people. Give them options, opportunity and responsibility. Accept that sometimes things will go wrong, and I can assure you – your fundraising will get better because of it.