FOREWORD
This book is a critical resource in a time when many institutions are struggling to demonstrate their relevance to rapidly changing social and economic conditions. This fifth edition of Achieving Excellence in Fundraising meets the challenge of responding to such concerns by combining rigorous research with the insights of exceptional practitioners. As lead editor of the prior three editions and intellectual successor to Hank Rosso, Dr. Gene Tempel is also welcoming a generational change with three new editors who bring fresh topics and perspectives to the endeavor. Tempel provides a valuable bridge from the founding vision of the publication to current and future practice. He has ensured that the book's enduring values continue to guide an engaging journey of discovery into what it means to excel in fundraising.
Professor Genevieve Shaker, the lead co‐editor, represents the next generation of leadership on the faculty of the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI. Her research focuses on fundraising and fundraisers, philanthropy in higher education, philanthropy education, and the ways people give in the workplace, drawing also on two decades of experience as a practitioner in the field. Dr. Sarah Nathan leads a community foundation while continuing her passions for teaching and scholarship, following her curiosity about those who choose fundraising as their calling. She also draws on her experiences developing cutting‐edge academic curricula on fundraising as well as professional development programs for The Fund Raising School. For over six years, Professor Bill Stanczykiewicz has been leading The Fund Raising School to new levels of innovation and prominence while taking on additional responsibility for the Lilly Family School's fundraising and communications programs. As a faculty member he has strengthened the leadership and fundraising aspects of the academic curriculum, drawing on his research into board dynamics as well as many years of experience serving as chief executive of a youth‐focused nonprofit.
What our new editors share with Gene Tempel is an intimate immersion in the intellectual life of the Lilly Family School, as well as a deep commitment to engaging those who fundraise as a way to improve our world. Their collaboration reveals that running deep and strong across generations is a desire to show how the joy of discovery leads to success in the field, and that the worlds of research and doing continue to build on each other in pursuit of excellence. As the founding dean of the Lilly Family School and president emeritus of the Indiana University Foundation – as a scholar and fundraiser – Tempel sets a high standard for the new generation of editors in integrating theory with practice.
This book was produced during a global pandemic, the likes of which we have not faced in living memory. The pandemic also became the stage for social justice movements based on dramatic incidents calling attention to racial and gender inequity and injustice, vivid signs of systemic discrimination, and increased political polarization. All have intensely affected the institutions most dependent on philanthropy. In normal times, keeping abreast of research and evolving practice is taxing enough. Doing so during the pandemic required additional efforts – not only because of the very human challenges our editors and authors faced, but also because the nonprofit sector and those who seek to engage it experienced novel stresses and strains that shifted the ground we seek to understand.
This volume speaks to the latest innovations in the field while addressing the perennial challenges involved in building meaningful relationships to support worthy causes. It also provides readers an opportunity to revisit the foundations of fundraising. What is the purpose of this activity? Who are its protagonists? And how does the work and those who enable it fit into conceptions of a good society and how we belong together – ideas that seem much more unsettled now than they were when the first edition of this book appeared thirty years ago.
In light of the political divisiveness of our times, as well as the global challenges exacerbated by the pandemic, it is perhaps all the more remarkable that we have a profession and a field of inquiry devoted to the relationships we build to advance the common good. As a formal profession, fundraising can be seen as a collective realization that we need to build community among the systems that modern society has created to enable us to interact at vast and impersonal scale.
Communities based on fundraising relationships are built as correctives to fix social problems. Or, they seek to ameliorate by enhancing the lives of others. Whether fixing or building, communities are valuable means to achieve important public goals, hopefully ones we can all appreciate.
To appreciate fundraising is to appreciate the scale of community, where people know each other personally and can make meaningful connections to those they aim to help. Yes, there is a universal human connection that moves us to donate to far‐off strangers, but that usually relies on the salience of our common mortality to grab our attention – something like a disaster.
So, as we consider the role of fundraising in our rapidly changing world, I am impressed by its role in fostering meaningful relationships that help us define who we are. No matter how technology, the economy, and political movements upend daily life, there is lasting value in building authentic relationships that seek to improve our world.
Communities are means to other ends, but they are also valuable in their own right. This is also the case with fundraising. As you excel in the craft, you too are likely to find pleasure and satisfaction in the process of fundraising. Relationships built on the road to elsewhere are often valuable milestones that give truth to the saying that the journey is more important than the destination. The relationships you build, aided by the discoveries you will experience in this book, will add to the satisfaction you derive from advancing the causes you serve.
I suspect this is also the case with my colleagues who put together this compendium of insights, provocations, guidelines, and prompts for discussion. Seeing this book roll off the printing press (and its digital counterpart) is a moment of achievement deserving celebration. But it pales in comparison to the multitude of moments of learning and debate it