helping also appeared to increase in popularity (Stiffman 2021c). Online giving grew exponentially. Almost half of all households reported paying for services not used during pandemic closures such as childcare and gym memberships, while frequenting local businesses for take‐out meals and other needs (Mesch et al. 2020). Most nonprofits survived, battered and exhausted by the crisis, and some with smaller teams than before, but with a sense of relief as operations resumed more normally (Parks 2021). Through it all, fundraisers' work proceeded, bringing new perspectives and practices, and overcoming challenges. As this book goes to press, the learning and adapting continues.
A Strong Tradition
In 1991, when Henry “Hank” Rosso wrote the preface for the first edition of Achieving Excellence in Fund Raising he noted how fundraising changed following World War II, a defining event for his generation. Like Hank's experience, our editorial perspective is shaped by a defining time period. Given the events in 2020 and 2021, this book includes a new section dedicated to contextual factors and evolving conditions. Without certainty of how the past two years will ultimately shape fundraising, we became acutely aware that conditions can change quickly. In years to come, fundraisers must be prepared to adapt more quickly and more intentionally than at any time in the recent past. Thus, throughout the book, we tried to balance innovations and changes in raising money with time‐tested best practices – research that is still emerging as the book is in production – and professional habits honed over years of pre‐pandemic experience. It was also important to us that this edition include many voices and that chapters draw attention to equity and justice in fundraising, including beneficiary representation and rights and ideas from community‐centric fundraising.
In that first edition, Hank also noted his mission to expand knowledge about fundraising and to serve as a resource to others. He was a pioneer fundraiser and a leading consultant of an era when the fundraising occupation professionalized and the IRS codified nonprofits' tax‐deductible status. He introduced much of what he taught in The Fund Raising School (TFRS) to a larger audience through Achieving Excellence in Fund Raising. Today, that symbiotic relationship continues with TFRS curriculum and materials, inspiring chapter authors and concepts from the book chapters and also providing source material for TFRS courses.
After Hank's passing, Gene Tempel took on the editorship with a second edition published in 2003. The third edition followed in 2011 with Tim Seiler and Eva Aldrich joining Tempel as editors. Five years later, Tempel and Seiler edited the fourth edition with Dwight Burlingame. Eva now leads CFRE International, the body that oversees the Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) credential. Both Tim and Dwight recently retired after decades of leadership. They all leave an indelible mark on generations of students and professionals, including this volume's editors.
A New Era
The fifth edition, published in 2022, has been released in tandem with the Lilly Family School's tenth anniversary and nearly 50 years after the founding of TFRS. Gene Tempel has passed the baton of editorial leadership to Genevieve Shaker, associate professor of philanthropic studies and TFRS faculty member, while himself playing a guiding transitional role in the most recent edition – his fourth. Bill Stanczykiewicz, director of TFRS since 2016, has joined the editorial team, as did his TFRS predecessor Tim Seiler (1996–2015) for the prior two editions. Sarah Nathan, who assisted with the third and fourth editions, is a former associate director of TFRS, and serves currently as the executive director of the Middletown Community Foundation.
Collectively, we have experience as fundraisers and leaders in nonprofits large and small; as board members and volunteer fundraisers; as educators of undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals; and as researchers and writers. We consider ourselves “pracademics” with strong interests in using research to inform the field. We are also perpetual students of philanthropy and fundraising who are humble in our desire to learn and grow.
This volume also features a new generation of chapter authors, all of whom are Lilly Family School of Philanthropy faculty, staff, alumni, students, and friends, with a number also being affiliated with TFRS.
Of the 54 authors in the volume, 33 are writing chapters for the book for the first time. We are pleased to welcome back authors from previous editions. Several authors' involvement stretches back decades, including Gene Tempel, who has written for every edition since the first, as well as Tim Seiler, Jim Hodge, Marnie Maxwell, and Lilya Wagner – contributors since the second edition. All told, the fifth edition cohort is the most diverse thus far. It is more representative of the fundraising community of today and tomorrow, but we recognize that there is more to be done.
While preparing this book, we discovered that the previous edition has been used in some 450 colleges and universities. This is indicative of growth in formalized fundraising education and of the book's expansion from handbook to teaching tool for students of fundraising, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector. It also continues to serve as a guide for board members, nonprofit professionals, volunteer fundraisers, those who want to “spread their wings” to other fundraising domains, and those who wish to hone their craft by applying research to their work.
Like the field itself, the editions of this book evolve as fundraising practice changes and adapts – while retaining the original purpose of achieving excellence. The gingko leaves on this cover were chosen to symbolize the book's longevity and the collective wisdom it contains. Gingko trees are among the oldest plant species on earth, displaying incredible resiliency, with many trees living for centuries. Gingkoes persist, even in the face of great adversity, including several that survived the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Every autumn, a group of volunteers collects the fallen seeds of these special trees. Under the banner of the Green Legacy Hiroshima Project, seeds are then sent around the world to promote peace and understanding. Recently, a sapling from one of these seeds was planted on the Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus, adding additional meaning for the editorial team.
Like the gingko tree, fundraisers are resilient professionals; we hope this volume plants many seeds of knowledge for new and experienced fundraisers alike.
The New Edition
In our quest to make a new edition for a new era, we strengthened the text for academic and professional education, and for more informal use. A set of learning objectives guides each chapter, articulating reading goals and creating the organizational structure. Chapters are uniform in length and format. All chapters received repeated, rigorous content reviews by multiple editors. Each chapter was carefully read for clarity in language, recognizing that many readers are experiencing fundraising terminology for the first time and that academic approaches to presenting research are not always reader friendly. Along these lines, we asked academic faculty who wrote chapters to make sure to translate the research into practical, actionable terms for use. Likewise, we asked practitioners to draw on research, when available and applicable, to enhance their chapters. Discussion questions invite readers to review each chapter's research and best practices. For the first time, the volume includes application exercises to provide hands‐on activities for readers to try out their learnings.
The book sections and their contents have been reorganized and reconceptualized. The book is organized chronologically, laying the ethical, legal, theoretical, and philosophical groundwork in the first section; next moving through contextual, organizational, and logistical considerations; and then into the landscape of fundraising programs, donor populations, and strategies. However, there is no one “right” way to navigate through the book. The 39 chapters are organized into seven sections, each of which might be the starting or focal point, depending on the reader's intended purposes.
Part One provides timeless knowledge for all fundraisers. “Developing a Personal Philosophy of Fundraising” sets the book's tone with the core
