It sounds like a rhetorical – or even facetious – question, but I’ve been thinking recently about the role that fundraisers play in raising funds for good causes.\u00a0I started my career as a fundraiser and I think it’s a fantastic profession full of dynamic, inspiring and hardworking people who are doing their best, often on minimal budgets, to keep great organisations afloat.But in my current role as a researcher I’ve been interviewing donors about why they choose to support charities, and they rarely mention any interventions by fundraisers. The stories donors tell about what attracted them to a cause and their reasons for sticking with it usually centre on internal impulses – their own passions, concerns, empathy etc – or the urging of loved ones and associates to make a donation.<\/p>\n
Yesterday I was reminded of this disparity between the official role of fundraisers as the expediters of donations and donors’ accounts that write fundraisers out of the picture. I went online to make a donation to the emergency response to the recent series of disasters in the Asia Pacific region . At one stage in the donation process I was asked to select from a list of 16 options to conclude the statement ‘I am making this donation because…’. I looked in vain for an option that related to my vague desire to ‘do something’ in response to the scenes of misery filling the TV news. But 12 of the 16 options that appeared in the drop down list were variations on the theme of being asked by a fundraiser (eg. ‘I saw an advert’, ‘I read a leaflet’, ‘I spoke to a fundraiser’) and none of the other 4 options were accurate (I wasn’t memorialising a loved one\/celebrating a birthday\/participating in a workplace scheme).<\/p>\n
It is clearly unfair and untrue to write fundraisers out of the picture, yet this list assumed that funds are only raised as a result of such prompts.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it doesn’t matter much; so long as funds are raised who cares who gets the credit? But if we are serious about creating a culture of asking to complement our culture of giving, then I suspect the fundraising profession needs to take two seemingly contrary steps. Firstly, it needs to remind donors that their impulses are often inspired, nurtured and sustained by the efforts of people working in fundraising departments. And secondly, it needs to recognise that people can make a decision to give without having been on the receiving end of any specific appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"