Simone Joyaux was one of SOFII’s most valued and loyal supporters. She was also a friend and frequent contributor. 

SOFII editor Joe Burnett says, ‘I first crossed paths with Simone when I was an intern for the Association of French Fundraisers nearly 20 years ago. She flew over to speak at our annual conference. It was clear her bold and radical ideas were invigorating and challenging to those in attendance. Fast forward to my early days at SOFII, circa 2017, and a trip to the Ask Direct Summer School in Dublin where Simone was again a speaker. Her presentations were just as powerful as they’d been all those years earlier. And she didn’t use slides! Yet she held the room in the palm of her hand with her engaging, iconoclastic delivery and great sense of humour.’

You will also find Ken Burnett’s moving tribute to Simone below. A lot of the articles he highlights form the bulk of this showcase. For SOFII, this sentence sums up Simone perfectly, ‘Simone was a true hero of the new age of responsible fundraising’.

Of course, there is one person who can best express how wonderful Simone was, and that’s Tom Ahern, her colleague and life partner. We are grateful to Tom for his words: ‘Simone and I were joined at the hip ... although, awkwardly, I was always one or more steps back. She led. I followed, trying to live up to her standards. Our favourite activity was hiking. We talked about fundraising, start to finish; for uncounted hours, on at least three continents. We met SOFII at IFC. Ken and Marie made their initial pitch for the idea. Simone banged me on the shoulder. "Yeah?" "Yeah!" We were in immediately. SOFII is about unrestricted sharing of knowledge across an industry. It's always about the future of great causes and about the next generation who raise support for those causes. So was Simone. Me, too.’