My friend Daniel Phelan, who has died aged 58 of cancer, was a journalist and social entrepreneur who gave a voice to the voluntary sector, not least through his creation of the magazine Charity Finance.
He launched the publication in 1990, and under his editorship and ownership it fast became influential. After seven years he stepped aside from editing to concentrate on other publishing projects, including the creation of Governance, a magazine dedicated to examining the governance of charities, and the setting up of the annual star-studded Charity Awards. He also developed surveys that produced invaluable information each year about charity shops and the charity audit world. Later on his company, Plaza Publishing (now Civil Society Media), acquired Professional Fundraising magazine and relaunched it.
Danny was born into an Irish family in Acton, west London, to Mavis and Thomas, and was the second of six children. He won a scholarship to Christ’s Hospital school, in Horsham, West Sussex, and went on to Durham University, where he came to prefer English to his first subject, theology, for which Durham was renowned. Both topics were to have a strong influence on his life and career.
After university he founded the record label Malicious Damage and toured as manager of the Notting Hill post-punk band Killing Joke. He then switched to a media career in 1987, writing for Assembly & Association, a magazine that provided a forum for membership bodies in the not-for-profit sector. Striking out on his own, in 1988 he founded Fundraising, the UK’s first magazine for fundraisers, in collaboration with what was then the Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers (now the Institute of Fundraising). Charity Finance followed two years later.
I was fortunate in 2008 to persuade Danny to join the board of a debt counselling charity I had founded, now known as StepChange. There his enterprise and vision helped balance a board of wide talents. He stepped down only at the end of his term in mid-2014. In his final months he made sure that Civil Society Media was left in good hands for the future.
Danny enjoyed fun, friends, food and travel. He lived and worked in Clapham, south London, and for many happy years had a lasting partnership with the artist Cathy Watkins. They married in 2014 and spent much of their spare time in St Ives, Cornwall.
He is survived by Cathy and by a daughter, Fabienne.
