six - What kind of job is fundraising?

Summary

The status of fundraising is still very much a matter of debate. Typical questions raised about the work of asking for money for a living include: Is fundraising a profession? If not, will it ever attain that status? Is it better described as a job, a career or a vocation? And is fundraising something that anyone can do, or does it require special attributes?

These questions matter because they relate directly to the shortage of talented fundraisers and subsequent recruitment crisis described in the introductory chapter. As Levy wryly notes: ‘Proud and preening parents brag about their children being doctors and lawyers … Have you ever heard a mother or father look up to the sky and say “Lord, I wish my child becomes a fundraiser!”? (Levy, 2009, p 2). Becoming a member of an established profession such as medicine or law often represents the fulfilment of a long-held dream and is a source of pride for the individual and their loved ones, yet people tend to ‘fall into’ fundraising (see Table 6, Chapter 2). Only a tiny percentage of current UK fundraisers (5%) say they ‘always wanted to work as a fundraiser’, and just under half (44%) describe it as an accidental rather than an aspirational career move.

Whether or not fundraising is a profession has attracted a disproportionate amount of attention in both the practitioner and academic literature, because for many people this label matters. In everyday usage, the word ‘profession’ signals a high-status occupation that commands – and deserves – respect, so it is an emotionally loaded concept (Bloland and Bornstein, 1991, pp 108–9). It impacts on practitioners’ self-esteem and their perceived likelihood of being taken seriously by donors and colleagues, and consequentially their ability to raise the resources required by their organisation to achieve its charitable mission. So, for fundraising to be held in similar esteem to other, established, professions, is viewed not only as a self-serving desire by practitioners, but also as beneficial to the organisations for whom they work, as well as their clients and beneficiaries (Worth and Asp, 1994, p 50; Mixer, 1993, p 252).