Essential Fundraising - Fundraisers - the Spawn of Satan

Often, fundraisers are viewed with mistrust and suspicion - which does nothing for the arts organisations they seek to support. Alice Devitt explains.
Lots of things help arts fundraising: planning, supportive volunteers, adopting charity techniques, but lately I've been wondering if there's a larger underlying challenge. Do too many organisations consider fundraising at best a necessary evil and at worst a satanic bargain? I work with a conservation coalition and recently received an email from a distinguished zoologist. She was debating whether or not to invite a new organisation to a meeting before they had formally joined the coalition. She wrote, "It should be alright. I don't think they'll come and sabotage anything or steal ideas. It's not as if they are marketers or fundraisers. They are conservationists."

After I had wrung my knickers out and recovered from laughing, I anonymised the email and sent it to all my fundraising/marketing friends who wearily agreed that this was more or less what their colleagues thought but weren't naïve enough to say aloud. A senior fundraising consultant replied that if you want to run an organisation, make damned sure you don't have marketing or fundraising on your CV. The Coalition Co-ordinator couldn't really see why I thought it worthy of attention as "It was sort of true, wasn't it? A conservationist wouldn't take advantage."

Perceptions

My first thought was that it's impossible to generalise about other sectors from the views of zoologists and environmentalists. However, I was subsequently explaining how one might integrate fundraising and marketing planning to a touring company. I was in analogy mode and said "Imagine for a minute that arts organisations were run by fundraisers or marketers rather than artistic folk." Everyone from General Manager and Producer to the work placement student shook their head in simultaneous horror. Such a scenario would clearly see all decency and artistic integrity thrown to the winds.

I believe this view permeates much of the thinking of curators, archivists, social and medical project workers, counsellors, artistic directors, producers and campaigners. There is a distinct lack of trust from those who do 'the stuff' for those who promote and raise funds for it. This is ironic as, in my experience, it is the fundraisers who live in mortal terror of unethical behaviour and unflattering publicity. As part of the outward-facing arm of any organisation they are one of the routes for audience and supporter engagement. They hear directly what people do and don't like. When scandal hits an organisation it nearly always impacts on fundraising first through cancelled subscriptions and angry complaints. Fundraisers are as decent and moral as other arts colleagues, though frequently less contemptuous of their supporters.

Vision

How can we break the false dichotomy of artistic integrity versus income generation? I believe some of this attitude stems from subsidy. One touring dance company bit the bullet and decided to recruit a General Manager who was a really good income generator. When it came to the crunch, the experienced fundraiser didn't get the job - the company acknowledging that since that morning they had heard they were now a regularly funded organisation, they didn't 'need to bother with all that now.'

Fundraising cannot, and I hope never will, take the place of arts subsidy. We do, however, need to make a stronger case for the part fundraising plays in the income mix. We need to explain how a vibrant and compelling artistic vision helps fundraising. Lack of organisational vision is the commonest complaint from fundraisers from any sector.

As a consultant I can say that trying to raise money for clients with no artistic vision is my trickiest challenge. A true sense of what an organisation wants to achieve, and how it is going to go about it, is the greatest fundraising tool you can have. That vision creates the sense of excitement needed to energise the fundraiser and entice donors. We all know of organisations with a buzzing sense of achievement. The companies where the fundraising is working are usually on an artistic roll. They are like that charismatic person who walks into a bar. There's something about them, people are drawn to them.
Fundraising would be great for many organisations if it could just get on with raising money and not bother anyone too much. Unfortunately it just doesn't work like that. Funders and donors want to hear from the people who benefit from or do 'the stuff'. Effective fundraising needs to involve the whole organisation. Legacies are garnered from the way your front of house staff greet visitors and audiences. Fundraisers are facilitators who identify and enthuse potential supporters and then introduce them to artists and practitioners.

Raising money

Things might also be easier if our colleagues understood how money is raised. Artists and practitioners are nearly always terrified they will have to ask for money when they meet potential donors. There is a pervasive belief that as soon as someone is identified they are mugged for a donation. I persistently have to assure them that they should just talk about what they do as passionately and knowledgeably as possible. If you do it right, donors often offer the money before they are asked anyway. I will never forget the shock on a project worker's face when she opened a £5,000 donation from an event attender. 'But I only talked about the project', she gasped. Fundraising should be a courtesan's seduction not hand-relief in a back alley.

All of this is common sense. We mutter it among ourselves, but we really have to think of ways of making the whole sector hear us if we are to improve the way we raise funds and our professional standing within the arts. What is Arts Council England's position on tying artistic directors and producers to chairs and making them listen to what we have to say? Perhaps our marketing colleagues could then jump in and tell them that it's not all about event publicity, and that audience building takes time?

The alternative might be to watch great arts organisations collapse and cut staff because they viewed fundraising with suspicion and refused to take the expert advice that could raise much needed income. Now that would be really satanic.