I don't think that fundraising has existed in the "conventional sense" for
a long time.  Any method of raising revenue could easily be defined as
"fundraising".  The idea of looking in areas not traditionally examined
(new user-pay programs, for instance) is probably one of the most necessary
things that we are all doing today.  But that's not news to anyone, and
whether or not you wish to call it fundraising or not is not the issue.
Many more institutions should be following the example of hiring staff to
actively seek out revenue from whatever sources are out there.  For
convenience, I'll call it "fundraising".

In a case where the "fundraiser" is asked to generate his or her own
salary, the public relations issues might have a greater negative impact
than not attempting to raise revenues at all.  As others have pointed out,
when the public finds out that their donation dollars are being spent on
the exercise of fundraising, many will cease to donate in future years, as
was the case with some charities whose operating expenses were revealed to
eat up a large portion of their donations.

What I don't understand is that asking a fundraiser to aim his/her
fundraising activity on "100% of his/her salary the first year" begs the
question of how can these additional revenues possibly benefit the
institution if he/she is merely paying for him/herself, and very few, if
any, dollars will find their way into museum coffers?  While I realize that
the long-term benefit to the museum exists (programs developed, membership
increased, etc.) perhaps another approach should be tried?

For example: I attended a conference session on fundraising, and the
speaker was hired as a fundraiser for a major art museum.  Her salary was
based on a percentage of the funds she raised, so while her salary WAS
dependent on her fundraising ability, and the success or failure of her
attempts DID rest squarely on her shoulders, on the other hand, she could
be very well-paid one year, and not so well paid the next, but the museum
did not have the financial burden of paying her salary in good years or
bad.  There was the added incentive of the fundraiser generating as much
revenue as possible both for the benefit of the institution and for her own
personal gain.

Maybe this is a naive view of the issue, as I can't claim a wealth of
experience in fundraising.  I just think it's an interesting issue that
begs discussion.

Alex Avdichuk
City of Toronto
Arts, Culture and Heritage Services
[log in to unmask]



This person would not be engaged in "fund raising" in the conventional
sense.  He/she would be developing revenue generating programs--lectures,
festival, travel-study programs, etc. for which we will charge fees.  We
should be doing these things anyway but don't have the staff to do so.  Our
thinking is that we could do them with a staff person as long as we
generate enough money to cover the staff person.  Over time, we would want
that to result in revenues in excess of the staff-person's salary.