Michie calls for code of practice on stewardship
Howard Lake | 7 November 2007 | News
Gordon Michie, director of development at Relationship Market, has called on the Institute of Fundraising to develop a code of practice on stewardship which must include a common definition of the term. Without it, Michie is concerned that the practice could ‘wither on the vine’.
Michie made the call to delegates to the Institute of Fundraising (Scotland) conference last week at which he launched his White Paper on stewardship. An expert on relationship fundraising, Michie said that the code of practice needs to contain a common definition of stewardship to prevent people “jumping on the bandwagon by offering faux-stewardship of warmed over relationship fundraising and donor care and not the real thing”.
His White Paper, ‘Pretenders to the Steward Throne’, identifies nine barriers that could prevent stewardship, a concept which originated in America, being taken up by fundraisers in the UK.
Advertisement
In the paper, Michie argues that there is no clear definition of fundraising stewardship and a lot of people would be hard pressed to differentiate it from relationship fundraising or donor care.
“Are we talking about stewardship of the donor or stewardship of the gift?” asks Michie. “Stewardship as a principle that fundraisers aspire to, or stewardship as a set of rules that they actually follow as part of their job description?
“Do we mean British or American concepts of stewardship? Or are we even talking about the difference between stewardship of an individual or stewardship of the whole pool of donors and potential donors?
“None of these questions has even been addressed let alone answered and the result is that many people are throwing about this new buzzword without having any real idea of what it means.
“Without this common definition of stewardship – which I would like to see the Institute of Fundraising arrive at through a consultation into a new code of practice – I fear that genuine stewardship will wither on the vine, while ‘stewardship’ becomes just another name for donor care and relationship fundraising.”
Michie adds that, without this definition, what is being touted as stewardship is little more than “warmed over relationship fundraising”.
The nine barriers to stewardship identified in ‘Pretenders to the Steward Throne’ are:
1. What does stewardship actually mean?
2. British- or American-style stewardship?
3. There is no common understanding of stewardship in a fundraising context
4. Bandwagon jumping
5. Low standards of donor care could undermine stewardship
6. Measurement – KPIs and benchmarks are needed to assess the impact of stewardship
7. Is stewardship a means or an end?
8. Training/CPD issues
9. Lack of will for stewardship to succeed
In Michie’s view, stewardship occupies a ‘third level’, sitting above donor care (first level) and relationship fundraising (second level). Under ‘Third Level Stewardship’ a fundraiser would “take responsibility for a donor’s philanthropy”.
Michie offers a vision of what this might look like in practice. “The ultimate goal of third level stewardship is to have a donor say to a major donor and/or fundraising steward: ‘You know what types of project I want to support, you know how I want to be kept informed, you know what kind of outcomes I expect to achieve, here’s my £500,000, I trust you, use this as you see fit’.”
In the paper he cites the example of NSPCC as the first charity in the country to set up a stewardship department. Tim Hunter, deputy director of fundraising at NSPCC, comments on this new department’s role: “It is their job to make sure all donors are getting thanked, acknowledged and the right level of feedback about what their donation has made possible”, he said.
“This person, or in the NSPCC’s case, this team, doesn’t have a fundraising target. Instead they work alongside fundraisers to make sure the donor experience is as good as it can possibly be by making them feel that their gift has been recognised and valued.”
Michie, however, argues that this is really “merely the enforcement of relationship fundraising.” True, third level stewardship involves much more. Indeed, he acknowledges that Ken Burnett summed up this ideal well in his 1992 book ‘Relationship Fundraising’: “Relationship Fundraising, Burnett said: “Think of your fundraising role as that of a double agent, providing a service to two different markets – the donor and the cause.”
www.relationshipmarketing.org.uk
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.