{"id":2755,"date":"2013-04-06T00:23:23","date_gmt":"2013-04-06T04:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/?p=2755"},"modified":"2013-04-06T00:23:23","modified_gmt":"2013-04-06T04:23:23","slug":"engaged-fundraising-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2013\/04\/engaged-fundraising-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Engaged Fundraising: I (More Pies)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pies\"There is probably no element of the nonprofit arts management structure that better understands the importance of relationships than the development department. Fundraisers spend their life initiating, fostering, and maintaining relationships with individual donors, corporate sponsors, and foundations. Especially with respect to individual donors, they have great clarity about the fact that effective relationship building takes time, often lots\u00a0<\/em>of time.<\/p>\n

(NB: As yet another reminder, in these mainstreaming engagement posts I am addressing only those individuals or organizations that want broader and deeper relationships with their communities but are uncertain how to begin or even whether it is possible to do so without completely reinventing the organization<\/em>.)<\/em><\/p>\n

No, donor solicitation is not community engagement. It is too focused on specific individuals and, in outcomes, it is too self-focused. However, it is one of my (many) continuing fantasies to have an arts organization’s individual donor experts train the rest of the staff (all<\/em> of them\u2013board members, artistic director, box office personnel, and on\u2013in the basics of relationship building). Then, everyone would be set loose upon the public to create, over time, meaningful relationships with individuals and segments of the community. The individual donor specialists are the ones with the chops to make this work.<\/p>\n

With that off my chest, let me return to considering the benefits to fundraising of a community engagement agenda. As I highlighted in my Farewell Rocco<\/a> post, Rocco Landesman demonstrated that when engaging with community (or national) issues, the arts gain access to far more “pots o’ money” than those (few) normally devoted to arts projects. Addressing social, educational, economic (though let’s not beat that horse to death), even spiritual issues that we identify by being “in dialogue” (my ’60’s roots are showing with that phrase) with the community opens up potential funding sources that are simply untouchable otherwise. This is about “baking more pies,” not cutting the existing one into smaller and smaller pieces.<\/p>\n

What’s not to like about this? (Other than the work relationship building takes. But then, fundraising is all about relationship building. This approach would simply build relationships with different people or groups.)<\/p>\n

Next time, we’ll revisit some thoughts on crowdsourced fundraising.<\/p>\n

Engage!<\/p>\n

Doug<\/p>\n

Photo: \"\"Some rights reserved by nfnitloop<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is probably no element of the nonprofit arts management structure that better understands the importance of relationships than the development department. Fundraisers spend their life initiating, fostering, and maintaining relationships with individual donors, corporate sponsors, and foundations. Especially with respect to individual donors, they have great clarity about the fact that effective relationship building […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[12,13,45,31],"class_list":{"0":"post-2755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-principles","7":"category-the-practice-of-engagement","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-community-engagement","10":"tag-fundraising","11":"tag-mainstreaming","12":"entry","13":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1G6h9-Ir","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2761,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2013\/04\/engaged-fundraising-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":2755,"position":0},"title":"Engaged Fundraising: II","author":"Doug Borwick","date":"April 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When last we met, I talked about community engaged fundraising providing the option of gaining us access to more diverse funding sources. [Engaged Fundraising: I (More Pies)] Here, I am revisiting the \"math\" of a former post (Arts 2.0: 40k x $25=$1M) in which I waxed rhapsodic about the potential\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arts 2.0"","block_context":{"text":"Arts 2.0","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/category\/arts-2-0\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/10\/40kx25-300x35.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2643,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2013\/03\/the-board-as-engagers\/","url_meta":{"origin":2755,"position":1},"title":"The Board as Engagers","author":"Doug Borwick","date":"March 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Today we consider nonprofit governance from a community engagement perspective, specifically the make-up and function of the nonprofit board of directors. Most arts administrators understand boards as resource engines. We have a history (understandably) of populating our boards with moneyed people or people who know moneyed people. They clearly represent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Principles"","block_context":{"text":"Principles","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/category\/principles\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Introductions","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Introductions-300x199.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2676,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2013\/03\/engaged-marketing-research\/","url_meta":{"origin":2755,"position":2},"title":"Engaged Marketing: Research","author":"Doug Borwick","date":"March 27, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In my ongoing effort to imagine arts management structures\/practices\/programs in a community engagement context (what I call mainstreaming engagement), I'm in the midst of several posts attempting to do that with marketing. In the beginning (Engaged Marketing: Introduction), I discussed (with myself) what marketing is\u2013a task not without its own\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Principles"","block_context":{"text":"Principles","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/category\/principles\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Bazaar","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Bazaar-300x174.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2683,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2013\/03\/engaged-marketing-sales\/","url_meta":{"origin":2755,"position":3},"title":"Engaged Marketing: Sales","author":"Doug Borwick","date":"March 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I am in the process of considering marketing as part of my ongoing series on mainstreaming community engagement\u2013figuring out how to be engaged without adding a lot of new \"stuff\" to do. Here, I want to discuss how the sales process can be \"engaging.\" (NB: In posts on mainstreaming engagement,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Principles"","block_context":{"text":"Principles","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/category\/principles\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Bazaar","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Bazaar-300x174.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4631,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2016\/08\/fifth-anniversary-highlights-transformative-engagement\/","url_meta":{"origin":2755,"position":4},"title":"Fifth Anniversary Highlights: Transformative Engagement","author":"Doug Borwick","date":"August 31, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"If an organization is not doing anything differently as a result of its engagement efforts, it\u2019s not focused on the community. It\u2019s focused on itself.","rel":"","context":"In "Principles"","block_context":{"text":"Principles","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/category\/principles\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/FiveCandles.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2195,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2012\/12\/well-rounded-organizations\/","url_meta":{"origin":2755,"position":5},"title":"Well Rounded Organizations","author":"Doug Borwick","date":"December 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent NY Times Sunday Magazine featured an article about child prodigies, musical and otherwise. In it there was a discussion of well-roundedness (or the lack thereof) of extremely gifted young people. The author, Andrew Solomon, says in the article, \"Musicians often talked to me about whether you achieve brilliance\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Principles"","block_context":{"text":"Principles","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/category\/principles\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/ChildProdigy.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}