Fundraising is farming and animal husbandry...
An article by Dr. Sonja Schüler - Research Associate at the Institute for Competitiveness and Communication at the School of Business of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland FHNW
Fiercely competitive donations market
It is often impossible for statutory bodies that are not primarily focused on pursuing economic purposes but on the common good to fully cover their resource requirements from sales revenue. In contrast to commercial enterprises, charitable organizations often provide intangible (trust) goods and services, which are sometimes only partially paid for or not paid for at all by their beneficiaries. This means that the required resources - in addition to financial resources, these include goods and services such as attention, volunteer services, infrastructure, advertising services and knowledge transfer - must be procured through fundraising measures. All fundraising-relevant resources are acquired through relationships with private individuals and key players in foundations, companies, service clubs and public authorities. These relationships, which are based on trust and reputation, are built up using a complex range of instruments, including face-to-face discussions and a wide variety of digital and analog channels.
Even in Switzerland, which is characterized by a much-quoted unbroken willingness to donate and volunteer, fundraising managers have to overcome a variety of challenges: In a competitive, fragmented donation market characterized by increasing cost and legitimacy pressure, they must position their organizations as trustworthy players, convince donors and win them over to their cause for as long as possible in order to secure funding. Increasingly, projects can only be financed and implemented through cooperation between heterogeneous constellations of private and public stakeholders. In network structures, hybrid performance and financing structures must be created in order to coordinate financial resources not only among themselves, but also over the course of project and organizational management and to guarantee the solvency of the organizations at all times.
At the same time, generation-specific trends in donation behavior can be observed: While older people, still the most important target group in fundraising, still relatively often maintain loyalty to specific organizations as members or loyal donors, often for years, an increasingly project-bound, hybrid, organization-independent donation behavior can be seen within younger generations. Messages, media mix and channels need to be rethought and designed with this development in mind if donors are to be acquired and retained across generations. On the one hand, an increasing variety of (online) communication channels offers fundraising managers numerous options for conveying messages to target and reference groups and making contact with them. On the other hand, the variety of topics, framings, target groups, platforms and instruments represented on the opinion market means that even experienced professionals are at risk of losing their bearings.
Fundraising is farming and animal husbandry - not hunting and gathering.
This is the oft-quoted saying of the theologian and fundraiser Lothar Schulz. Medium-term, sustainable securing of the resource base of organizations is not possible through isolated ad-hoc measures in the sense of hunting and gathering. Referring to agriculture and animal husbandry as metaphorical allusions to agricultural work logic, Schulz characterizes fundraising management as a time-intensive, specialist profession that requires continuous (development) work and must be aligned with the basic values, goals and strategies of organizational management.
The complexity of the framework conditions of fundraising demands a great deal of professionalism from fundraising managers in terms of the ability to systematically analyze, plan, implement and control all fundraising activities in line with the needs and interests of those providing the resources. Successful strategic and operational fundraising management requires sound knowledge of the entire range of fundraising instruments as well as ethical and legal scope for action and legitimacy. Successful fundraising management also requires the ability to interpret political and socio-economic developments as well as (communication and everyday) cultural specifics at an early stage with regard to their potential impact on donor behavior.
Fundraising management is relationship work.
Relationships thrive on mutual perception and exchange through communication, authenticity and trust. Non-profit organizations offer trustworthy goods whose quality and "trustworthiness" cannot always be verified by their reference groups. Building trust and reputation with the target groups of fundraising requires authentic communication with credible, emotional messages. Only communicative quality and trust signals and communication tools that are tailored to the needs, interests and communication behavior of the target groups really serve to reach potential donors. Relationships based on trust must be developed in the medium term if they are to result in sustainable supportive behavior for charitable projects. Interested parties and donors want to know what their resources are actually used for, what they achieve and how their commitment is used. In addition to the "common thread" of a fundraising strategy planned for the medium term, transparent communication with relationship-building messages to interested parties, sponsors and supporters on the basis of a medium-term communication strategy is therefore essential. This must include all relevant reference groups within and outside the organization.
Fundraising as an organizational principle
In view of increasing predatory competition and declining public funding, coupled with increasingly complex challenges and tasks in the social sector, needs-oriented, strategically planned fundraising and communication management for non-profit organizations are gaining in importance as potentially decisive competitive factors. Fundraising is proving to be a long-term, targeted process and an organizational principle that requires systematic planning, continuous coordination of all activities and transparent impact measurement. This process offers organizations numerous opportunities: in order to carry out target group and needs-oriented fundraising management, those responsible must deal with the structure of their own organization, whereby the organizational profile can be sharpened both "internally" and "externally". Their market knowledge puts them in a position to proactively bring their organizations into the public eye. Medium-term planning and impact measurement ensure certainty of action, efficiency and clear information on target achievement, successes and failures.
Dr. Sonja Schüler
Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz FHNW
Hochschule für Wirtschaft
Institute for Competitiveness and Communication ICC
Riggenbachstrasse 16
4600 Olten
[email protected]
Training and consulting for non-profit organisations: https://www.fhnw.ch/de/weiterbildung/wirtschaft/cas-kommunikation-npo https://www.fhnw.ch/de/weiterbildung/wirtschaft/cas-fundraising-management https://www.fhnw.ch/de/die-fhnw/hochschulen/hsw