In praise of trust fundraisers – the salt of the fundraising earth
Howard Lake | 9 June 2009 | Blogs
Picture the scene. It’s a glitzy, glamorous ball for all the charity’s major donor prospects. All the fundraising staff are there, glammed up in their DJs and little black dresses, pressing flesh and working the room. That includes my partner Sarah (this is several years and a few charities ago), who was head of this charity’s trusts team.
Present at the event was the new major donor manager (not the head of the team) and it just so happens that this function was taking place in his very first week and he and Sarah had not met until the night.
And so another member of the department introduced them: “This is Sarah, she heads our trusts team.”
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“Ah yes,” the major donor manager replied. “Trusts was my entry-level job in fundraising.”
Sarah nearly decked him.
Then the following year, I was at Professional Fundraising’s Scotland conference at a session about major donor fundraising. The talk soon turned to the dearth of major donor fundraisers. Many of the US major donor fundraisers brought in by the big universities hadn’t delivered and there just weren’t enough home grown fundraisers to meet demand, not just at universities but general charities too. Delegates wondered whether corporate fundraisers could be recruited to fill the ranks.
So I put my hand up and asked a question. “Why not recruit trust fundraisers into the major donor role?” I asked.
An awkward stillness fell across the room. Delegates shuffled uncomfortably in their seats. Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled. Tumbleweed rolled down the aisles between seats. The presenter – who shall remain nameless – looked at me with dumbstruck eyes. I honestly think he needed time to recover his composure at having been asked such a ridiculous question because it took a full five seconds for him speak, which is quite a long time when you are holding silent eye contact with someone in a classroom.
“Well, er,” he began uncertainly. “I can see why corporate fundraisers could do the job because it’s very similar to major donor work. It’s about getting out and meeting high profile people and you need to be an outgoing confident sort of person for that job.”
Then he added, and I kid you not: “But trust fundraisers are much more comfortable sitting behind a desk doing research. It’s not really for them.”
When I subsequently told this story to Sarah, it was about 10 minutes before the air lost its azure tinge.
So far, two humorous anecdotes at the expense of trust fundraisers. But they say far more about the prejudiced view that a good many fundraisers – who ought to know better – hold of trust fundraisers. (I have to say I have not been blameless in this respect, as some of you might remember trust fundraisers being cast as the ‘Bland People’ in the PF Star Wars parody a few years ago.)
First, trust fundraising is the backbone of the voluntary sector. According to NCVO’s 2009 Civil Society Almanac, of charities £13.6bn income, 11 per cent comes in the form of grants, secured by trust fundraisers. By contrast, Iain Wilkinson at Kent University tells me the estimate for income raised through major gifts is around six per cent. And NCVO/CAF figures have always shown corporate income to be little more than four per cent.
The stereotyping (and belittling) of trust fundraisers as desk jockeys totally fails to recognise that they raise twice or maybe three times the sums of money that corporate fundraisers and major gift fundraisers get.
Second, it fails to acknowledge that the process of trust fundraising is no different to that of major donors or corporates.
First there’s prospect research. Second there’s cultivation. Third there’s the ask. I’m not a fundraiser myself, but I’ve read the books, hobnobbed with the best, (and of course I live with one) and if you want to distil the fundraising process to its bare essence, then that’s pretty much it.
I think many non-trust fundraisers would be surprised at how much prospect research trust fundraisers do into grantmaking trusts. I think they’d be surprised at how much cultivation they do, not just of the trust as an organisational entity but of the individual grantmakers who make the decisions. You know, they even go out of their way to meet them personally, just like a major donor fundraiser would. And of course, have you ever met a trust fundraiser who was too cautious to ask for a donation and kept postponing the ask.
So I want to raise a glass to trust fundraisers, the backbone of the fundraising profession and salt of the fundraising earth.
BTW, Sarah is now a major donor fundraiser.
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.