Applying a stakeholder management approach to ethics in charitable fundraising

While nonprofit accountability literature recognizes many stakeholders, even theoretically grounded approaches to fundraising ethics tend to focus more narrowly on donors, organizations, and their missions. This paper draws on business ethics scholarship by proposing a stakeholder management approach to ethics in fundraising. This approach foregrounds intentional examination of the multiple stakeholders in the fundraising process: the organization; its donors; current beneficiaries; the broader population within the issue; the fundraisers themselves; and the community. Following stakeholder theory, ethical fundraising activities must align with the charitable mission of the organization, and take into account the legitimate interests of those groups and individuals who can affect, or be affected by, its activities. The process of intentionally identifying, prioritizing, mapping claims, engaging with, and monitoring stakeholders offers fundraisers, nonprofit executives, and members of governing and advisory boards a pragmatic means of aligning fundraising efforts with the mission, values, and long-term strategy of their organizations.     

Finding an academic home for fundraising: a multidisciplinary study of scholars' perspectives

• The high‐demand, high‐paying field of fundraising does not have an academic home in higher education, which hampers fundraising research and education. Recent advances in fundraising education and research can be attributed to four different disciplines: public relations, marketing, nonprofit management, and higher education administration. This disjointed approach has impeded the empirical study of fundraising, the development of theory in the field, and the education of future fundraisers. The purpose of this study is to begin the process to scientifically identify an appropriate academic home for fundraising that benefits fundraising practice, advances scholarship, and strengthens America's nonprofit sector. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 15 scholars from multiple disciplines who had published articles on fundraising in the three major nonprofit management and philanthropy journals. Findings show that there is no consensus among scholars about whether fundraising belongs in public relations, marketing, or nonprofit management. Although this study found no consensus among fundraising scholars about the appropriate academic home for fundraising, it does identify areas of agreement and disagreement on pertinent topics and provides a benchmark to guide further discussions about locating fundraising within an academic discipline.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ethics of Care as a theory of normative fundraising ethics

Little normative ethical theory exists in the nonprofit marketing literature. Previous attempts at an ethical framework for the field of nonprofit fundraising fell short of fully considering the full spectrum of relationships involved in fundraising practice. We introduce the concept of Ethics of Care, an ethical theory that centers around relationships and interpersonal well-being, as a philosophical foundation for professional ethics in the field of fundraising. We believe this theory provides a suitable framework in which to ground questions of professional ethics for nonprofit fundraising professionals. The adoption of Ethics of Care as a normative ethical theory for fundraising will allow applied ethical questions in the field to be explored in a way that more fully addresses all parties involved in fundraising and affected by its outcomes. Our paper illustrates the process of applying the foundational principles in specific ethical quandaries found within fundraising and aims to address the omission of the beneficiary in the majority of previous ethical frameworks and promote a new set of standards that fully incorporates and balances all stakeholders' needs.     

How fundraising is carried out in US nonprofit organisations

A substantial number of nonprofit organisations in the USA report inflows of charitable contributions or grants without expenditures allocated to fundraising costs. This observation raises questions about how fundraising is carried out. Based on a survey of US charities, the paper observes that nonprofit organisations use a range of internal capacities and external relationships to conduct their fundraising. The use of staff members dedicated to fundraising is common, but much fundraising is still carried out by executive directors, volunteers and board members. Also, a substantial number of organisations engage external entities, including federated campaigns, support organisations and professional fundraising firms to generate contributions. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Electronic mail as a fundraising tool

The World Wide Web has attracted considerable attention and investment in the for-profit and nonprofit worlds, but electronic mail (e-mail) alone can be one of the most effective online fundraising and marketing tools. Its use in fundraising appeals is considered and its relationship to traditional direct mail fundraising discussed. Other more innovative methods of incorporating e-mail into a fundraising mix are explored, including the basic applications of an e-mail signature to the more advanced uses of automated e-mail response systems. This paper is based on research carried out by the author at City University during 1994 and 1995 as part of an MSc course in Information Science and published as ‘Electronic sources of fundraising information for UK nonprofit fundraisers’.     

Software for nonprofit fundraising and marketing

This paper discusses whether or not nonprofit donation processing software can be developed for nonprofit marketing. It shows, from previous research, that money-raising rather than money-processing is a crucial justification for a fundraising computer system. However, it is in money-processing rather than money-raising that most fundraising systems have their origins. It identifies key differences in software purpose; transaction processing is reactive, money-focused, and task-oriented, whereas nonprofit marketing is proactive, donor-focused and process-oriented. The paper looks at IT evolution over the last 50 years and recognises three phases: automate, informate and transformate. The paper suggests that fundraising systems are somewhere between automate and informate. Transformational IT has yet to come for the nonprofit world. The paper shows where the strains occur when a transaction processing system is pressed into use for marketing, and the most common causes of problems are identified. Finally it sets an agenda for nonprofit marketing systems which focus on holistic donor management, and suggests a number of data and functional needs that set marketing systems apart from transaction processing systems.     

Benchmarking the fundraising performance of UK charities

• The cost of fundraising and its effectiveness are issues of increasing importance in the UK nonprofit sector. Measuring fundraising effectiveness properly is critical to organisations on two fronts. From a financial stewardship perspective, charities need to ensure that their fundraising is as efficient as possible. From a public relations perspective they need to be able to demonstrate this to donors and our other stakeholders. There are many problems to be overcome in objectively judging a charity's performance relative to other nonprofit organisations. There are significant methodological barriers to be overcome to produce valid and meaningful comparisons. The well established Fundratios study shows that it is feasible to construct a methodology for robust benchmarking underpinned by good quality data which charities can use as a tool to inform the management of their fundraising activities.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

America's worst charities: The effect of bad press on philanthropic giving behavior

Negative media stories about nonprofits can potentially lead to decreased financial donations. We used agenda setting theory to study donors' perceptions of what could arguably be called one of the most negative nonprofit media stories in recent times: the 2013 Tampa Bay Times report titled “America's worst charities.” This news story identified and ranked America's 50 worst charities based on solicitation (i.e., fundraising) costs and was investigated further by CNN. We surveyed 655 individuals in August 2016 and found that approximately 3 years since the story had aired, 278 (42.4%) of the sample still remembered the news story, and the majority of them reported that it negatively influenced their thinking (63%) and philanthropic donation behavior (62%). These findings have implications for nonprofit media relations and fundraising.     

Fundraising as women's work? Examining the profession with a gender lens

Fundraising is a mission-critical area for nonprofit organizations and has emerged as a professional field in the past 50 years. This paper explores the gendered nature of fundraising work and its feminization as a profession over time, while simultaneously documenting the persistence of a gender pay gap and male overrepresentation in senior-level positions in both North America and in the UK. The application of gender theory reveals that fundraising roles and responsibilities rely on key relationship-building and organizational tasks, which are commonly associated with stereotypical women's work and are, thus, valued less in a patriarchal society. As a result, the devaluing of fundraising as mission-critical work, and a career suitable for both women and men, may limit the credibility and power of the nonprofit sector to represent diverse voices and enhance democratic values in society. The article concludes with recommendations for research and practice.     

The state-of-the-art and future research directions in bequest fundraising by nonprofit organizations: A systematic literature review

The topic of fundraising is garnering increased attention from nonprofit practitioners due to the worldwide growth of the nonprofit sector and the subsequent competition for private funds. Despite this surge, academic literature on fundraising and bequest fundraising, in particular, has remained mainly limited to narrow aspects of the discipline. Based on a systematic review of literature published over the past 25 years, we synthesize various research perspectives into a comprehensive framework of studies linking the different issues highlighted by the authors. The purpose of this article is to consolidate the state of academic research on bequest fundraising by not-for-profit organizations. The literature review underscores how research efforts have not paid much attention to bequest fundraising from the NPO's perspective, although as it has become an increasingly important source of income for charitable organizations. The majority of studies focus on the Donor's perspective, striving to understand what drives the desire to leave a charitable bequest. The findings of the SLR show a gap in the knowledge of NPOs' internal mechanisms concerning the particular topic of charitable bequests; from these insights, the future research directions are proposed.     

Brochure fundraising

A fundraising brochure is regarded by many charities as a major source of income. This is associated usually with the charity's major fundraising event in its annual calendar. What many charities do not do is plan their brochure campaign to eliminate wasted effort and costs while maximising revenue received. This paper examines brochure fundraising techniques, drawing on personal and anecdotal experiences of fundraisers working in the nonprofit and voluntary sector.     

Face-to-face donor cancellation rates (attrition): establishing a benchmark

• Face-to-face fundraising, both on the street and on the doorstep, has taken place in the UK for well over a decade. Its success can be said to be dependent on the balance between acquisition costs and income generated for the charity. Whilst the former is easy to measure, the latter has proven much harder to predict. This paper reports the results of a survey of the payment behaviour of over 377 000 face-to-face recruited regular giving donors, to 30 charities. Whilst charity brand awareness was found not to have a significant impact on levels of attrition, the region in which campaigns were run, together with the level of the ask and the cause of the charity, were all found to have a significant effect on attrition. As a result of improvements in both attrition and average gift from 2004 to 2006, charities have reported increased income from their street and door face-to-face campaigns.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fundraising,race, and discourse: The challenges and opportunities' of social construction

Fundraisers have turned their attention to minority communities as potential resources despite the fact that minority communities are both underserved by and underrepresented in nonprofit organizations. This paper argues that the current approach to minority fundraising, which uses broad racial categories, is limiting. Minority fundraising practice and research face three distinct challenges (racial categorization, socially constructed markets, and privilege) that can be addressed through a focus on language, specifically discourse analysis.     

Relational care in communication as the basis of nonprofit fundraising: Theorizing professional ethics based in stewardship and ethics of care

At its core, fundraising is relationship building. Therefore, ethical fundraising requires cultivating genuine, care-based relationships between various stakeholders by considering relational goals and communicative practices. We advance an ethics of care-oriented approach toward fundraising based in nurturing authentic relationships with multiple organizational stakeholders, including donors, employees, beneficiaries, and volunteers. Drawing upon ethics of care and stewardship scholarship based in public relations, the purpose of this article is to propose relational care in communication through dialogue as an ethical springboard of nonprofit fundraising.     

Market orientation and marketing in nonprofit organizations. Indications for fundraising from Victoria

The effectiveness of a market orientation has been established in other parts of the world. Using a modified replication study of 401 nonprofit organizations from Victoria, this research took some initial steps to assess fundraising and marketing activities. Studies in Australia have usually focused on only one part of the Third Sector. This study takes a different view and uses a criteria sampling method to survey all 11 sections named by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The self‐reported data of fundraising activities showed that there were several choices available to all nonprofit organizations that can lead to an improvement in organizational performance. Results suggest that should nonprofit organizations have knowledge generating systems that evaluate their performance, this will improve outcomes for them. Even though organizational size is strongly linked to fundraising performance, there are key drivers that can aid even small organizations in their efforts. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Anticipating public expectations of humanitarian action—An ethnographic study of recruiting donors through face‐to‐face fundraising

In this article, we show how anticipating public opinion reinforces the tendencies of fundraising to work against the long‐term aims of humanitarian non‐governmental organisations through investigating the practices of face‐to‐face fundraising. The data of this qualitative analysis are based on the field notes of 45 encounters where we subjected ourselves to the fundraising performances of face‐to‐face campaigners. Furthermore, we conducted 12 semistructured interviews with fundraising and communication experts and made participant observations in the training sessions of new fundraisers and fundraising workshops. Through abductive content analysis, we show that face‐to‐face fundraising campaigns are designed to be simple and appealing rather than informative. The designers expect that audiences will not be able to digest complex information during brief encounters on the street. With advice from trainers, street fundraisers transform predesigned campaign materials into catchy, emotion‐loaded narratives. Street campaigners are also advised to echo the opinions of passers‐by. On the streets, campaigners need to establish a sense of proximity between the public and beneficiaries, (over)emphasise the agency capacities of donors, and particularise the humanitarian agenda according to the preferences of their audiences. Subsequently, our results show how anticipating public expectations sets manifold conditions for the discursive content of face‐to‐face fundraising.     

The ‘new’ donor: creation or evolution?

The unusual mass of financial capital produced in the late 20th century, complemented by the creative thinking of innovative philanthropists, engendered new ideas for philanthropy. An entrepreneurial focus, greater emphasis on partnerships among business, government and nonprofit sectors, and new wealth as well as new social innovation dramatically affected the philanthropic scene — and therefore nonprofit organisations and fundraising. A publication extolling venture philanthropy stated, ‘Philanthropy may be on the cusp of the greatest revolution in the nonprofit sector since Congress granted tax‐exempt status in 1954’.[Morino Institute (2001) ‘2001 Venture Philanthropy: The Changing Landscape’, prepared for the Morino Institute and Venture Philanthropy Partners, Inc., by Community Wealth Ventures, Inc.] This paper defines the terminology that identifies the new donor, describes new roles and practices in philanthropy, and looks at how the new donor fits into a comprehensive fundraising programme. New approaches to philanthropy versus traditional philanthropy are considered, including whether or not these approaches are actually new or represent an evolution in giving. Futureprojectionsarediscussedaswellascaveats regarding the maintenance of balance between what is tried and true and what is a trend. Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications     

Initial evidence on whether use of professional fundraising services increases fundraising effectiveness

• We provide initial evidence on whether use of professional fundraising services by US nonprofit organizations (NPOs) increases the effectiveness of NPOs' fundraising efforts. To a well-tested model of organization-level donations, we add an interaction term that captures the impact that professional fundraising fees an NPO incurs has on the effectiveness of an NPOs' spending on fundraising in raising donations. We find that professional fundraising fees has a significant positive impact on the effectiveness of fundraising efforts in raising donations for NPOs in the full, education, and health samples, but no impact for NPOs in the arts and human services samples. For NPOs in the full sample and NPOs in the education sample, one quarter of the effect of fundraising on donations stems from the positive impact of professional fundraising services on the effectiveness of fundraising in raising donations. For NPOs in the health sample, one half of the effect of fundraising on donations stems from the positive impact of professional fundraising services on the effectiveness of fundraising in raising donations. These results suggest that professional fundraising services significantly enhance the effectiveness of fundraising for these types of NPOs. While the results of this study seem to confirm the decisions of managers of education and health NPOs to utilize professional fundraising services, the results also suggest that managers of arts and human services NPOs may want to reconsider using professional fundraising services, at least the types of services they currently purchase and the way they currently utilize such services.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bringing legacy marketing to life

This paper aims to confront the long-held view that legacy fundraising is a depressing and death-related subject, which must be carried out apart from other fundraising activities. In the past, legacy fundraising has been focused on the mechanism and tax benefits, and the marketing focus has been on professional advisers. This paper challenges the past by discussing recent developments which show that legacy marketing is fulfilled more effectively by integrating it into all other fundraising structures and activities. In addition, successful legacy marketing is given a better opportunity to succeed if a rigorous strategic approach is taken and the resultant message is a positive one, which is spread by face-to-face meetings of peers—especially volunteers, trustees and even users of the not-for-profit service.     

Cash may be king,but goods are queen: Marketing for noncash donations by nonprofit organizations

To thrive and survive, nonprofit organizations should always seek new sources of donations. Although many of these entities are laser-focused on obtaining cash and other similar forms of funds from their donors, they should not forget the abundant donation type that is also available to them: noncash goods. The process of marketing to donors for these goods is unique compared to fundraising for cash. Consequently, the goal of this study is multifaceted: to remind nonprofit organizations of the availability of noncash goods as a donation source, encourage them to unlock this trove through marketing, and provide them with recommendations on how to do so.