Achieving Excellence in Fundraising

In that first edition, Hank also noted his mission to expand knowledge about fundraising and to serve as a resource to others. He was a pioneer fundraiser and a leading consultant of an era when the fundraising occupation professionalized and the IRS codified nonprofits' tax‐deductible status. He introduced much of what he taught in The Fund Raising School (TFRS) to a larger audience through Achieving Excellence in Fund Raising . Today, that symbiotic relationship continues with TFRS curriculum and materials, inspiring chapter authors and concepts from the book chapters and also providing source material for TFRS courses.

After Hank's passing, Gene Tempel took on the editorship with a second edition published in 2003. The third edition followed in 2011 with Tim Seiler and Eva Aldrich joining Tempel as editors. Five years later, Tempel and Seiler edited the fourth edition with Dwight Burlingame. Eva now leads CFRE International, the body that oversees the Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE) credential. Both Tim and Dwight recently retired after decades of leadership. They all leave an indelible mark on generations of students and professionals, including this volume's editors.

The fifth edition, published in 2022, has been released in tandem with the Lilly Family School's tenth anniversary and nearly 50 years after the founding of TFRS. Gene Tempel has passed the baton of editorial leadership to Genevieve Shaker, associate professor of philanthropic studies and TFRS faculty member, while himself playing a guiding transitional role in the most recent edition – his fourth. Bill Stanczykiewicz, director of TFRS since 2016, has joined the editorial team, as did his TFRS predecessor Tim Seiler (1996–2015) for the prior two editions. Sarah Nathan, who assisted with the third and fourth editions, is a former associate director of TFRS, and serves currently as the executive director of the Middletown Community Foundation.

Collectively, we have experience as fundraisers and leaders in nonprofits large and small; as board members and volunteer fundraisers; as educators of undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals; and as researchers and writers. We consider ourselves “pracademics” with strong interests in using research to inform the field. We are also perpetual students of philanthropy and fundraising who are humble in our desire to learn and grow.

This volume also features a new generation of chapter authors, all of whom are Lilly Family School of Philanthropy faculty, staff, alumni, students, and friends, with a number also being affiliated with TFRS.

Of the 54 authors in the volume, 33 are writing chapters for the book for the first time. We are pleased to welcome back authors from previous editions. Several authors' involvement stretches back decades, including Gene Tempel, who has written for every edition since the first, as well as Tim Seiler, Jim Hodge, Marnie Maxwell, and Lilya Wagner – contributors since the second edition. All told, the fifth edition cohort is the most diverse thus far. It is more representative of the fundraising community of today and tomorrow, but we recognize that there is more to be done.

While preparing this book, we discovered that the previous edition has been used in some 450 colleges and universities. This is indicative of growth in formalized fundraising education and of the book's expansion from handbook to teaching tool for students of fundraising, philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector. It also continues to serve as a guide for board members, nonprofit professionals, volunteer fundraisers, those who want to “spread their wings” to other fundraising domains, and those who wish to hone their craft by applying research to their work.

Like the field itself, the editions of this book evolve as fundraising practice changes and adapts – while retaining the original purpose of achieving excellence. The gingko leaves on this cover were chosen to symbolize the book's longevity and the collective wisdom it contains. Gingko trees are among the oldest plant species on earth, displaying incredible resiliency, with many trees living for centuries. Gingkoes persist, even in the face of great adversity, including several that survived the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Every autumn, a group of volunteers collects the fallen seeds of these special trees. Under the banner of the Green Legacy Hiroshima Project, seeds are then sent around the world to promote peace and understanding. Recently, a sapling from one of these seeds was planted on the Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus, adding additional meaning for the editorial team.

Like the gingko tree, fundraisers are resilient professionals; we hope this volume plants many seeds of knowledge for new and experienced fundraisers alike.

In our quest to make a new edition for a new era, we strengthened the text for academic and professional education, and for more informal use. A set of learning objectives guides each chapter, articulating reading goals and creating the organizational structure. Chapters are uniform in length and format. All chapters received repeated, rigorous content reviews by multiple editors. Each chapter was carefully read for clarity in language, recognizing that many readers are experiencing fundraising terminology for the first time and that academic approaches to presenting research are not always reader friendly. Along these lines, we asked academic faculty who wrote chapters to make sure to translate the research into practical, actionable terms for use. Likewise, we asked practitioners to draw on research, when available and applicable, to enhance their chapters. Discussion questions invite readers to review each chapter's research and best practices. For the first time, the volume includes application exercises to provide hands‐on activities for readers to try out their learnings.

The book sections and their contents have been reorganized and reconceptualized. The book is organized chronologically, laying the ethical, legal, theoretical, and philosophical groundwork in the first section; next moving through contextual, organizational, and logistical considerations; and then into the landscape of fundraising programs, donor populations, and strategies. However, there is no one “right” way to navigate through the book. The 39 chapters are organized into seven sections, each of which might be the starting or focal point, depending on the reader's intended purposes.

Part Oneprovides timeless knowledge for all fundraisers. “Developing a Personal Philosophy of Fundraising” sets the book's tone with the core values that underlie fundraising as the gentle art of teaching the joy of giving (Rosso 1991), with an added approach of empowering fundraisers to develop and acknowledge their own philosophies based on values, beliefs, and lived experience. A chapter on the joy of giving returns in this volume, bringing new research that proves Rosso's maxim. This section also includes consideration of ethical and legal implications for fundraising as well as a new chapter connecting practice to interdisciplinary theory.

The next part, “Contemporary Dynamics of Fundraising,” examines the ever‐changing external landscape for this work. Two of the chapters return from previous editions with significant revision ( Chapters 6and 9). Chapters 7, 8, and 10are new to Achieving Excellence and contribute insights into the nuances of fundraising in challenging times and the various subsectors, and with a lens of equity and justice.

Part Threepresents organizational fundamentals for executing a comprehensive fundraising program. The seven chapters in this section illuminate steps in the fundraising cycle, from examining the case for support to donor identification through donor relations and stewardship. This section also looks at how fundraising programs intersect and collaborate with marketing efforts as well as how to budget for fundraising.