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Sector at risk of diluting stewardship opportunities if code of practice not developed

Fundraising | Becky Slack | 16 Jun 2008

A code of practice dedicated to fundraising stewardship is essential if the sector is to maximise the potential of the concept.

This is according to Pretenders to the Steward Throne, a White Paper by Gordon Michie, director of development at Relationship Fundraising, who believes that without it the term will become interchangeable with ‘donor care’ and ‘relationship fundraising’, which are two distinct terms in their own right.

Donor care, Michie says, is about ensuring the organisation holds accurate details for their supporters, while relationship fundraising, the term coined by Ken Burnett in the early 90s, is about putting the needs and values of the donor at the heart of all fundraisers do. “

It is about letting donors choose how much they give and when; it’s about letting them decide how often they want you to communicate with them and by what media,” he says. “Stewardship, to some extent, is an opposite of that. With genuine stewardship, you take the onus and control away from the donor and take it upon yourself.”Stewardship is a much-used term within the sector at ” present. The NSPCC has recently developed a stewardship account and an increasing number of agencies and consultants are beginning to use the language within their pitches.

However, definitions of stewardship range from “the personal responsibility for taking care of another person’s philanthropy or charitable giving” to “the responsibility to take care of the potential pool of donations and donors to ensure this resouce is sustainably managed for current and future generations”. Michie fears that unless a common understanding as to what it means is adopted, it will become just a “fashion accessory”.“

If stewardship is to become an accepted and respected part of the fundraising process, then alongside a common definition and KPIs, best practice guidelines and dedicated stewardship training programmes must be developed,” says Michie. “Without this, I fear that genuine stewardship will wither on the vine, while ‘stewardship’ becomes just another name for donor care and relationship fundraising.”

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Who's Who: Becky Slack