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 will facilitate, and the countless professional and volunteer fundraisers whose talents will blossom by engaging the thoughts and experiences that have been compiled as signposts for their journey.
Achieving Excellence is a vital institution because it enables journeys of fundraising that will shape our times. Bon voyage!
Amir Pasic
Eugene R. Tempel Dean
Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy
September 2021
PREFACE
As we began work on this edition in spring 2020, nonprofits and fundraisers around the world faced challenges and uncertainties like never before. The novel coronavirus was in its first months and economies were staggering with the related pressures. In the United States, a social justice movement was spotlighting historical and structural issues related to racial equity. Similar social movements were occurring around the globe. Nonprofits were reflecting deeply on their commitments to equity and inclusion. Some faced exponential rises in needs for services, and others experienced declining opportunities to deliver their missions and garner needed income.
Because of COVID‐19, we could not gather in person for editorial meetings at the Indiana University (IU) Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI. Rather, we met online as our university leaders explored the best ways to keep our community healthy and safe and maintain financial stability. Indiana University fundraisers paused to make sense of campus and community needs and expectations, rather than completing previously planned efforts. Like their peers at other colleges and universities, they called and wrote donors to check on their well‐being and to provide updates. They resumed fundraising, prioritizing emergency support for students, whose need for special assistance was quickly evident.
Just as university fundraisers were navigating unknown territory, fundraisers across the wide and diverse nonprofit sector found themselves scrambling to keep up with pressing demands for more resources. Their responsibility for funding organizational missions weighed heavily and they wondered how to build relationships without seeing donors in person. Like clients, donors, and everyone else, fundraisers struggled with their own personal difficulties and uncertainties.
As it turned out, we all soon witnessed the generosity of people helping their neighbors and communities in extraordinary ways. College students creating direct aid programs, providing funds, food, and even temporary housing for one another. Monetary gifts from individuals flooded into food pantries, community health organizations, schools, and social service agencies of all kinds. Small business owners shifted from profit‐making activities to providing free meals for frontline workers and making masks, isolation gowns, and hand sanitizer. Foundations responded by loosening grant restrictions, corporations made public pledges to aid in relief efforts, and both broadened commitments to social justice funding. State and local governments shifted priorities to address the pandemic, and the whole of society adjusted.
Now, two years later, we know that 2020 was the most generous year on record. Giving USA (2021) recorded $471.44 billion dollars in charitable giving driven by increased contributions from foundations and individuals. Although more difficult to track, direct giving, mutual
