Fundraising must professionalise for the future, says Rogare paper
Melanie May | 22 June 2017 | News
Fundraising is not a profession when assessed against accepted criteria and must professionalise for the sake of future fundraisers, a discussion paper from Rogare has suggested.
The green paper – Less than my job’s worth: Is fundraising a profession and does it matter if it isn’t? – argues that analysis would most likely conclude that fundraising were an ‘emerging profession’ at best, but at worst a trade little different to sales.
The paper, authored by Rogare director Ian MacQuillin, argues that some of the areas in which fundraising falls short are:
- There is no standard body of knowledge that fundraisers are required to acquire before they can practise as a paid fundraiser, nor so they can continue practising once they have become a fundraiser.
- Fundraisers have little ‘professional autonomy’ to act in the manner they see best, free from the coercion or direction of others.
- Fundraising has little in the way of a coherent theory of professional ethics to underpin it.
- In England and Wales, fundraisers do not establish or self-regulate their own standards – self-regulation is generally seen as a core trait of being a profession.
It argues that a lack of formal and professional education in fundraising is a cause of many of these issues, stating that about 60 per cent of IoF members do not hold a professional qualification, while 55 per cent of American fundraisers say they are ‘self-taught’. According to the paper, this shows a lack of a clear career path for people to enter fundraising where they can learn the theories and practical skills they need.
McQuillin said:
“The problems associated with not being seen as a profession are that fundraisers are treated with a lack of professional respect, and are viewed as employees who are told what to do, rather than specialists whose advice on matters of income generation is sought.”
“With so many people ‘falling into’ fundraising by accident, the duty on current members of the fundraising profession is to professionalise for the benefit of those fundraisers who come after them so that the fundraisers of 2030 have a defined entry route into a recognised profession, and the status, trust and legitimacy that entails.”Advertisement
A task group of Rogare’s International Advisory Panel, led by Cherian Koshy, director of development at Des Moines Performing Arts in the USA, will now explore the issues raised in the green paper. The task group will:
- Identify the issues affected by fundraising’s perceived lack of professional status
- Identify how these issues, challenges and problems would be solved were fundraising to professionalise
- Recommend whether fundraising needs to professionalise
- Recommend what fundraising needs to do in order to professionalise.
The green paper is part of Rogare’s ongoing review of fundraising’s professional ethics. The first output from this review was last year’s white paper, which proposed seeking to balance fundraisers’ duties to their donors with those to their beneficiaries. According to Rogare, a decision-making framework based on this white paper is currently being developed and will be published later this year.
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.