Fundraising as organisational knowing in practice: Evidence from the arts and higher education in the UK

Abstract

This paper argues for the centrality of organisational practices in occupational learning with a case study of fundraising in the non-profit UK's arts and higher education sectors. Despite the need to increase charitable giving to non-profit organisations, little is known about the work, fundraisers must do in order to carry out their jobs. We argue that fundraisers develop strategic understandings and competences within organisational environments, which they put into practice in their relationships with stakeholders within and outside the organisations where they work. Our findings suggest that one of the main ways in which fundraisers learn is by negotiating and surmounting obstacles both internally, within their organisational environments and externally, around the perception of fundraising as a profession. We thus argue for the importance of establishing a "fundraising culture" within organisational environments; a shared organisational competence where fundraising is practiced as a legitimate and strategic type of practice.

Beyond survival mode: Organizational resilience capabilities in nonprofit arts and culture fundraising during the Covid‐19 pandemic

“…Usually written from a marketing or management orientation, this literature is designed to help fundraisers “get the job done” (Holman & Sargent, 2006 ; Lloyd, 2006 ; Sargeant & Jay, 2014 ). On the other hand, an emerging field of critical fundraising studies (Alborough, 2017 ; Breeze, 2017 ; Herrero & Kraemer, 2020 ) is gradually building a theoretical base to examine the “taken for granted”, “common sense” assumptions underpinning fundraising, as something that one learns “by just getting on with it” (Breeze, 2017 , p. 94). In this article, we argue that the organizational environment within which fundraisers operate is crucial to their in/ability to carry out their work effectively.…”

“…Our approach to fundraising research is framed within the practice‐based studies (PBS) perspective (Herrero & Kraemer, 2020 ). Since its emergence in the 1990s, it has increasingly become one of the established ways of analyzing how learning occurs within organizational environments (Billett, 2001 ; Gherardi, 2000 , 2009 ; Ibert, 2007 ; Nicolini et al, 2003 ; Orlikowski, 2002 ; Schatzki et al, 2001 ).…”

Financing Sustainability in the Arts Sector: The Case of the Art Bonus Public Crowdfunding Campaign in Italy

“…Managers of cultural organizations need to use the platform and fiscal incentives in an integrated strategy, but they also need to refine a successful fundraising strategy based on the specific type of audience for their organization, matching the organizational mission [10]. Therefore, they need to provide tools to increase transparency and accountability and to plan tailored fundraising strategies.…”

“…Specifically, arts and cultural organizations have become aware of the need to be more autonomous in defining their goals and implementing actions to diversify their funding sources [8,9]. Therefore, fundraising is essential, since an organization's fundraising capability is a key factor of its success, enabling its independence and sustainability [10,11]. In this sense, the connection between cultural organizations and sustainability is both a financial concern and an issue of socio-cultural sustainability [12,13].…”

The Hong Kong Umbrella Movement as a non‐profit organization: An empirical study on the use of visual branding practices for social change

“…Apart from occupying Hong Kong airport, setting up roadblocks, starting hunger strikes and forming human chains, a group of protesters managed to raise funding and place their own advertising messages – ‘Stand with Hong Kong in G20’ – in 10 international newspapers including the New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Japan Times (Cheng, 2019). Accordingly and moving beyond traditional fundraising practices within non‐profit organizations (Herrero & Kraemer, 2020; Jones & Castillo, 2017; Kay Williams, 2006), we explore how a social movement has efficiently managed fundraising processes. Due to lack of space, we do not seek to scrutinize or discuss in more detail the political background and wider effects of the ongoing Hong Kong protests on the economy and society in general, but we will focus on the employment of visual branding techniques by protesters within the 2014 camps in the following sections.…”