This is the first in a series of four posts reflecting on a conversation about donor-centred fundraising and growing donor love with Professor Jen Shang PhD, Philanthropic Psychologist, and Co-Founder and Co-Director at the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy in the UK.

For each blog, I have edited the relevant excerpt from the interview as a starting point then expanded on it with my own thoughts before offering some questions for review and application within your own organisations. Here is the outline of the 4 posts:

Part 1 – Moving beyond donor-centred vs community-centric fundraising
Part 2 – Instead of “donor as hero”, why not “donor as fellow human being”?
Part 3 – Isn’t loving your donors just fancy personalisation and segmentation?
Part 4 – Is AI capable of growing love?

I began hearing about philanthropic psychology around 2020. Around the same time, the movement towards decolonising fundraising was starting to pick up momentum again. Donor-centred fundraising was becoming a dirty concept in some circles and the pressure to move the fundraising story away from the donor was mounting.

This made it very hard for fundraising copywriting practitioners like me to keep developing traditional donor-centred appeals that would perform well. On occasion, I even wondered whether I should bow out of fundraising copywriting altogether. So many charities I worked with were struggling with finding “a balance” between donor-centred messaging and what they called “giving agency” to their beneficiaries.

After picking up some of the basic concepts of philanthropic psychology, I began wondering whether this approach held some answers and alternatives to this problem. I enrolled in the Certificate of Philanthropic Psychology, and later the Certificate of Fundraising Copywriting, to find out more. The more I learned, the more excited I became. Here was a mindset based in proven donor psychology, evidence-based. Here we could build on what we already knew about donor-centred fundraising but potentially move toward workable alternatives to “donor as hero”.

I had lots to think through. Hence I requested an interview last year with Professor Jen Shang. I wanted to ask Jen some of my questions with the intention of writing a blog about it. I came away with even more to think about. It’s taken a while but here is the first excerpt from that discussion and some thinking points. 

INTERVIEW EXCERPT 1

June: I’d like to hear your thoughts on donor-centred fundraising vs “beneficiary”-centred fundraising vs organisational-centred fundraising.

Prof Jen: Fundraising communication is about creating a connection between donors and someone, some planet, some animal, some principles. So that connection is the centre. The choice of how to tell the story will have to be decided by how to most effectively create that connection.

June: So rather than doing donor-centred fundraising, we should be doing perhaps connection-centred fundraising?

Prof Jen: We can do that but why do we need a term that includes centre in it? If we need to say what is at the centre, the centre is the love between people.

I feel that when people really love their organisation, when you help them see that all you are asking them to do is to love their donors in the same way that they love their animals, their plants, their people that they help, then it’s not very difficult for them to love another group of people – their donors – in the same way.

So we’re just connecting to their love of people. We’re not telling them anything new. And they are often really good at doing that already because they’re expert in loving particular groups of people already. We’re only asking them to transfer their expertise to a different group. And usually when that switch goes on, people run faster than me. I don’t need to fight, “Oh, you shouldn’t focus on your organisation”. I tell them to focus on their expertise to love people and to expand that to the donors.

And then they’re the best at doing it because they are the best in understanding the people that their programs take care of, the animals their programs take care of, their staff their programs take care of because they are the expert in doing that. Nobody else is going to beat them in their expertise in caring for the donors who love the same things.

Love is the centre.

I love this framing of fundraising from Jen.

For me, it simplifies everything. It takes away the Us vs Them battle non-profits often find themselves in – Program people on one side and Fundraisers on the other, perhaps Marketing on a third side – and allows us to focus simply on bringing connection.

To understand this battle, it can be helpful to look briefly at the history of donor-centred and community (or ‘beneficiary’) centred fundraising. Donor-centric fundraising came about because so many charities were so focused on themselves and their organisation. This made them terrible at loving their donors, so, in a bid to counter this, donor-centred fundraising became the new buzz-word.

In fact, being donor-centred isn’t a new concept – it’s simply Marketing 101 in the field of fundraising. In the commercial world, marketing is about matching consumers with products and services that benefit them in some way. So donor-centred fundraising is simply matching the donor with causes they are passionate about.

Yet in the philanthropy and major gifts space, donor-centred fundraising began to unearth some problems. In some charities, donors had too much say in how their gifts were used – an unhealthy power dynamic resulting in abuses by a small number of donors.

This situation, coupled with a shift away from saviourism, led to the growth of community or beneficiary-centred fundraising. This approach is grounded in equity and social justice, and centres the community your organisation works with.

These two different approaches have obvious areas of tension, which can create silos and rifts within your organisation – and in fact, right across the non-profit sector.

That’s why I love philanthropic psychology so much. It doesn’t rely on trying to find a compromise between two opposite positions. It doesn’t rely on prioritising one group of people over the other. It doesn’t rely on the consumer mindset fundraising inherited from marketing.

It’s simply about love. Loving donors. Loving community members. Creating relationships and connections between people: donors, community members, staff, volunteers, your Board, and anyone else involved in your organisation. Where all sides give and receive love.

Loving and caring for others is a key part of your donor’s identity. The more you can allow them to feel this part of themselves, the more loving they’ll feel towards others. It follows then that instead of the donor taking on a saviour-type role, they help a fellow human being simply because they’re a loving caring person. In this way, you naturally move away from issues of saviourism and towards connection with people like you.

When you move towards love, you move away from one group holding the power. You move away from Us and Them. And you move towards equity, connection – and better well-being for everyone.

Love is the centre.

What now?

Here are some questions or ideas to kickstart your thinking in this area.

1. As fundraisers, we’re in the business of making the world a better place. Does that mean we only want to achieve the mission of our organisation – or do we also want to improve the well-being of everyone who comes into contact with us, like our donors?

2. Do we want our relationships with donors to be transactional? Or do we want donors to be passionate about our cause? Do we want donors to have a heart connection with us? How do we want our staff to interact with our donors?

3. What does love being at the centre mean for you? How would it change what you did if you called it love-centric fundraising? How would it change how you treated your donors? How do you treat people who love what you do, and who share the same values as you?