Fundraising is NOT Fun!

by Brian Saber

Contrary to what Arthur C. Brooks of The New York Times declared in his March 29 Op-Ed “Why Fund-Raising is Fun” – fundraising generally isn’t fun and he does a huge disservice to the field saying it is. Fundraising can be incredibly rewarding, no doubt. As a frontline fundraiser my whole life, I have gotten huge satisfaction bringing important dollars to organizations that are doing incredibly important and impactful work. And it’s been wonderful to watch some people grow as donors over the years.

Fundraising can be fascinating. Getting to know people so well and understanding what makes them tick and what makes them give – or not! – is very interesting to me. I think we learn more about human nature when people talk about their money and how to spend it than when we talk about sex or anything else.

But fun? Fundraising for most of us doesn’t involve glamorous, high net worth donors. It doesn’t involve traveling to exotic parts of the world, learning from world-class scientists. It doesn’t involve being highly compensated. It doesn’t involve having all the necessary tools at our fingertips. For most of us, fundraising is very, very hard work that is barely acknowledged. And most of that work is spent helping our organizations make our June 30 or December 31 fiscal year budget. We’ve got programs that need to continue running and that will only happen if we make our numbers. We have the pressure of keeping our organizations going. If we don’t bring in the money, people get fired and no one gets the programs and services they need.

For most of us, fundraising isn’t some spiritual calling. We came to the non-profit world to make a difference. We found out we could be effective as fundraisers, and we agreed to do what is often the hardest, most thankless work in an organization. That doesn’t make us martyrs, but it does make us people who were willing to put aside certain levels of fulfillment in order to help the world be a better place.

That doesn’t mean we don’t feel fundraising can’t be rewarding or fascinating or whatever. But it simply isn’t fun. And saying it should be or could be is dismissive and denigrating to me and my countless peers in the field who get out there to fundraise every day. The reality of the non-profit world is there are tons of little-known organizations doing amazing work on a shoestring that need to raise annual fund dollars every day of the week to keep the organizations going.

There are tons of organizations putting on special events, sending out letters, asking for in-kind contributions, writing proposals. So instead of telling us it should be fun and making us feel bad if we feel we missed the party, how about acknowledging the hard work we do? That will resonate a lot more with me and my countless peers in the field.