Toward Professionalization: Fund Raising Norms and Their Implications for Practice

Abstract

This article outlines the core traits of professions and discusses the extent to which fund raising possesses these traits. Three inviolable and six admonitory normative patterns of fund-raising behavior are described and their implications for the practice of fund raising are discussed. This article reexamines the fund-raising profession in comparison with the markers of true professions as suggested in the sociological literature. First, the core traits of professions and their relationship to fund raising is examined. Second, professional self-regulation is discussed. Third, the informal norms that fund raisers use to self-regulate are described. Finally, the importance of these norms to the profession and their use for practitioners is outlined.

Studying Philanthropy and Fundraising in the Field of Higher Education

“…Similarly, development offices at Boston College may require their peers to attend professional seminars and workshops organized by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) as a result of intense competition among elite colleges and universities in the United States. Because competition has caused colleges and universities to become more alike instead of distinctive, leaders of higher education must recruit several managers (e.g., director of gift planning, director of development) and specialized staff members (e.g., major gifts coordinator, assistant director of athletic development) to assist current newcomers and career changers with new fundraising responsibilities being placed for the welfare of both donors and institutions (Caboni, 2012). In other words, the professionalization of fundraising may serve to reinforce and act as an isomorphic force of socialization (i.e., standard methods of practice, normative rules about appropriate behavior), of which, in turn, prompt fundraising professionals to a commonly recognized hierarchy of status (i.e., formal and informal means) that is driven by status competition and institutional prestige (i.e., organizational identity).…”