#118 | Has fundraising professionalized an inferiority complex?

To kick things off, Claire explained to me that she has been quite unimpressed with fundraising practices in the United Kingdom. She shared that her disappointment began brewing at a national conference where she was quite troubled with the language that the speakers were using to characterize our work and the way that we should relate to donors. She left feeling as if fundraising was nothing more than a soulless machine designed to exploit value and asking  herself whether our missions were so inadequate as to warrant such bad behavior. 

Our conversation stirred up some bold questions for us to consider. Are our professional identities so entrenched that we can’t think critically about what it is we are doing? Are we so different from our donors that we can’t relate to them? Have we professionalized an inferiority complex that keeps us from achieving all that we could?

Claire believes we can make the most progress with our boards and the leaders that we hire. She believes that boards need to be more aware of how fundraising gets done and that they need to hire talent whose goals go beyond simply raising more money than the last fella.

Once again, we are very grateful for the support of OneCause for being our sponsor.