Just what the bloody hell is ‘stewardship’?

Hello Ian – good to have your input from a different and very valid perspective.

As you’ll know from when we’ve discussed this in the past, I agree with a lot of what you say and, as you rightly point out, stewardship is “the effective management of resources on behalf of someone else, their ultimate owner”.

But there is also another concept of ‘stewarding’ – if not of ‘stewardship’ per se. This is what ‘stewards’ do at rock concerts and sports events. They look after you, guide you to your seats, keep you on the straight and narrow and make sure you come to no harm.

I think that as the fundraising sector comes to terms with what it means by stewardship, we may find that it has more in common with this second meaning – in helping supporters on their ‘supporter journeys’.

If I understand your argument correctly, you’re saying that people should be ‘stewards’ of using their own resources to support good causes, and you say that in a “faith-based context”, millions of people already understand their responsibilities.

However, what about those people who don’t give in a faith-based context? They may consider themselves the ultimate owner of their own resources, not God, so they can’t ‘steward’ what they own themselves.

I think – and correct me if I’m wrong – that you’re saying that donors and supporters should be stewards of the cause. I don’t disagree with that. What I am saying is that fundraisers can be stewards of their philanthropy.

I don’t see there’s any harm in that. And anyway, if so many people took complete responsibility for stewarding good causes through their own resources, we wouldn’t need a single fundraiser, professional or amateur, and we clearly do.

However we define it, I think that the term ‘stewardship’ is here to stay in fundraising and the reason we have instigated this debate and why we are running our survey is precisely because we don’t want the term to be ‘hijacked’ to become synonymous with relationship fundraising.

I am fascinated by this recent attempt to highjack the term "stewardship" in a fundraising context to mean a kind of "super relationship marketing" (SRM).

The term stewardship has been in common use for centuries (indeed millennia) in one significant fundraising sector - among churches, mosques, synagogues and other faith-based organisations. Stewardship is literally the effective management of resources on behalf of someone else, their ultimate owner.

So the Lord High Steward ranks ahead of all other Court officers in the Coronation procession as the Head of the Sovereign's Household - way ahead of the Prime Minister or Archbishops. Stewards were the men who actually managed the great estates of the landed gentry. The current government's agricultural subsidy system is known as the Stewardship Programme, as it is designed to make the most effective use of the land from an environmental point of view.

In a fsith-based fundraising context, stewardship is about the effective use of the resources God allows us to use - our health, wealth, homes etc. Stewardship is the individual donor's responsibility to use their time, talents and wealth most effectively. It is not a fundraising technique or relationship, or something that the fundraiser does. It is alll about what the donor does, and their attitude and motivation.

There are millions of faith-based donors out there who already have clear ideas about their responsibilities as stewards. As a result independent surveys show they are amongst the most generous and committed of the charity sector's funders. Please don't confuse them by implying that stewardship is what charities and fundraisers do, not donors. It will only confuse them, or worse still switch off their generosity.

I welcome the current survey, but it is heavily loaded with assumptions that place stewardship in the context of relationship marketing. It would not make much sense to the network of faith-based professional fundraisers who have been teaching stewardship principles for years.

Ian Clark, Church of England, which raises more voluntary income than the threelargest national charities combined, and far more cost-effectively!

Transparency, stewardship, and embedded hypotheses. Fundraising just isn't as straightforward as it used to be...

But, to back up Ian's request, I'd encourage readers to contribute to Gordon Michie's survey to help us tie down exactly what we mean by stewardship. And yes, as a man of my word, I've already taken the survey, even if it took some encouragement from Ian...