It is Not Just Asking: Investigating the Role of Fundraisers in Developing Long-term Gift Relationships

• In Event: Acquisition, Satisfaction, and Sustainable Relationships in Fundraising

Abstract

There has been a recent growth in the literature exploring charitable gift giving and the fundraising mechanisms through which to trigger such giving. This literature largely explores what motivates giving behaviour with the aim of understanding and predicting the main drivers of charitable giving. Givers are investigated as if their giving practices stem entirely from their subjective moral identities and social experiences, which need only to be triggered by a direct solicitation (Andreoni, 2006; Okten & Weisbrod, 2000; Yaish & Varese, 2001, Bryant et al, 2003; Bekkers & Wiepking, 2007). However, whilst this may explain why individuals choose to give one-off gifts, they do little to explain why donors choose to enter into long-term, repeat giving partnerships with charitable organisations.

This paper suggests that the above is exacerbated by a lack of empirical investigation into the actual workings of the fundraising process within organisations and even less on who takes responsibility for fundraising. In order to address this oversight, the day-to-day practice of fundraisers is analysed from a perspective that draws on the theories of the gift proposed by Mauss, Titmuss, Schwartz and colleagues.

The findings in this paper draw on qualitative data from 44 interviews with fundraisers and their colleagues across 14 organisations. The study examines the ways in which fundraisers build and maintain long-term giving relationships with the individuals who provide financial support to charitable organisations. The interviews are complemented by a secondary analysis of donors’ descriptions of their gift giving from both online sources and previous studies of donor behaviour.

Findings suggest that fundraising practice is best analysed within the context of models of charitable and philanthropic behaviour in which philanthropy is understood as a positional social relationship (see, Ostrander & Schervish, 1990; Musik & Wilson, 2007; Elder-Vass, 2015). In these models, the ask or invitation to participate takes place within or as result of the social interactions and relationships within which donors are embedded. This places those who ask and manage these relationships at the heart of the gift relationship. The research goes on to illustrate that, in the absence of direct natural social relationships between donor and distant beneficiary, fundraisers attempt to mimic such social relations in a way in which the ask is a natural occurrence rather than a specific moment or one-off trigger of a donor’s inherent altruistic tendencies.

Mauss, M (1954/2011) The Gift, Martino Publishing, Mansfield Centre.

Author

• Lesley Jane Alborough, University of Kent