Why the charity sector badly needs a fundraising degree
Until now, fundraisers have learnt on the job. These days they’re mostly graduates so they’ve had time to develop their critical thinking, but there’s still a whole lot they don’t know. The scope of the role often surprises people; it’s vast. You’re familiar with the fundraisers you meet in the street, and the letters you get through the door. But have you thought about the way websites make giving easy (or sometimes don’t), or the complexity that goes into making a marathon or a gala dinner into a fundraiser?
Even more obscured from public gaze are the bid-writers who secure over £3 billion each year from grant makers. Then there’s government funding and major donors, the wealthy who give back to society. I could go on listing media channels and data management, research and reporting roles. So there’s a lot to learn: legal, theoretical, strategic and interpersonal. We need a degree dedicated to fundraising because charities can’t afford to wait for a fundraiser to get up to speed. The people they serve need that income now not tomorrow - for some it’s literally a life and death issue.
Importance of learning partnerships
At the University of Chichester we’re really excited about the learning partnerships we’re building with companies and charities as part of the world’s first undergraduate degree in fundraising, Charity Development BA (hons). Software and services company Blackbaud, which has a widely used fundraising tool, will sponsor student internships with local charities and also provide free software for undergraduates so students can really apply what’s been taught.
Whenever we’ve asked charities what they want from the degree, practical experience has been up there with knowledge as a priority.
It’s not just about educating fundraisers who can hit the ground running; there’s a skills shortage. According to the National Council for Voluntary Services, there were around 31,000 UK professional fundraisers in 2013 and 15,000 jobs were advertised on the two leading charity job websites in 2013. With 164,000 charities in the UK there simply aren’t enough good fundraisers to meet the demand and it really does matter. If a charity can’t recruit an able fundraiser, it's going to struggle to secure the funding it needs.
That’s what we would call a "case for support" in fundraising. It says: “We need more fundraisers who have the knowledge and skills to generate income immediately, because without them vulnerable people won’t have access to life-changing services."
A three year degree is particularly well suited to achieving this. Firstly it allows students to learn across the skills base, from bid writing, to online engagement, to event management, to direct mail and beyond. Whereas workplace learners find themselves quickly syphoned into a specific field of practice based on where they entered the profession, rather than where they are most able or most needed.
Charities of all sizes can benefit
For smaller charities which may only employ one fundraiser - that’s 97% of all charities according to the Foundation for Social Improvement - having someone who knows their way round all the different approaches is vital. If a smaller charity's fundraiser is only really confident running events, but making grant applications is the charity’s best option, then it may find itself missing out on income that could be vital. Often it’s the ability to work across a range of fundraising skills that’s essential to a secure and regular income stream.
However, the large charities too can benefit from fundraisers who have had time to develop their critical thinking. Fundraising is an innovative and creative job, donors need to be refreshed and inspired, and the same old fundraising formula year in year out just won’t do. Three years of playing with ideas and testing different solutions isn’t a luxury, it’s an essential preparation for creative thinking, a skill it’s hard to grow in the day to day rush of the workplace. There’s a body of theory that can help set it free, if you have time to learn it.
Small and large charities alike also need fundraisers who know the "hard stuff" like the legal frameworks and best practice, as well as the "soft stuff", the interpersonal skills that are the difference between successful fundraising and failure. A fundraising degree needs to cover all of this.
Fundraising is a serious profession
I don’t necessarily mean "serious" as in important, although fundraising obviously is that. I mean "serious" as in being taken seriously a profession. Once upon a time, this bit’s hard to imagine, people said that marketing wasn’t something you could study at university. Now you can study it at pretty much any university.
There’s a vast "academy" of knowledge based on many research papers and the exciting confluence of practical workplace knowledge and academic theory. Workplace experience and theory spark off each other to deliver innovation and better practice.
Creating a professional academy isn’t just about creating better practice though. It also results in important debates about ethics, value to society and the creation of rewarding careers for individuals. These are all discussions that we should be having about fundraising. Launching a new degree isn’t going to do this singlehandedly, but I believe that it helps lay the foundations by inviting the professional and academic worlds to come together to help take this important sector to the next level.
I know I’m not alone in feeling this way either. Back in 2011 one of the leading thinkers, Professor Adrian Sargeant, wrote: “There is not a single undergraduate degree in fundraising currently available in the United States. Degrees in marketing are plentiful, yet a degree to prepare an individual for a career in our profession is notable only by its absence." But it isn’t just the US that lacks an undergraduate degree in fundraising, it’s the world, and until September 2014 it’s still the case.
In the meantime, academics like Adrian Sargeant and Beth Breeze are doing important research that creates a more robust body of knowledge, so that training can be based on new insights, tested knowledge and not just what what’s been done before.
Not losing out on the best talent
Another impact of not offering an academic career route into fundraising is that the charity sector loses out on some of the best talent and we can’t afford for that to happen. Fundraising is of such importance to so many that it is vital to attract those who are best at it and trained to do the best job possible.
The degree in fundraising at the University of Chichester is accredited by the Institute of Fundraising. As Paul Marvel, its director of professional development, commented: “We are pleased to accredit the course against our Certificate in Fundraising. This (degree) represents an enormous step forward for the fundraising profession and for young people seeing fundraising as a credible and desirable career.”
