Tenacity might be key to good fundraising, but, Beth Breeze asks, can British fundraisers afford to up their tenaciousness?

Did you hear the one about the doctor, the lawyer and the fundraiser who all die at the same time? When they reach the pearly gates of heaven, St Peter offers the doctor, who arrives first, a single wish as a reward for doing so much good on earth. The doctor asks for a million pounds and walks through the gates into eternal paradise. The lawyer, who is second in line, overhears the conversation and when his turn comes he asks for - and gets – a billion pounds. Next up comes the fundraiser. When St Peter asks what reward she’d like, she says: “I know it’s a big ask, but could I have the business cards of the two people who were just in front of me?”.

That joke (hopefully) makes people who read this website laugh because we recognise – and relate to – the instinctive reaction of a hardened fundraiser. But if pressed to spell out exactly how fundraisers differ from their fellow beings – whether at the pearly gates or here on earth – we might struggle to pin down the nature of the qualities possessed by those who are successful at asking for money.

This year’s survey of fundraising directors tried to get at an answer to that question. Survey respondents were invited to name the three ‘magic ingredients’ that successful fundraisers must possess. Among a wide range of answers, including frequent mentions of ‘passion’, ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘the willingness to ask’, the most common answer that emerged was the quality of tenacity.

Now, ‘tenacity’ is not a commonplace word, which makes it even more interesting to be cited by so many respondents. It derives from the root word ‘tenacious’, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as: “Holding tightly, not easily separable, tough, keeping firm hold (of property, principles, life etc).” It’s synonymous with ‘chutzpah’ and ‘determination’, and as well as less positive terms like ‘intransigence’ and ‘inflexibility’. Yet I’m fairly sure my fundraising friends will view it as a compliment, and certainly preferable to antonyms such as ‘indifference’ or ‘irresolution’.

Tenacity can reap great rewards. I recently heard a North American fundraiser describe a prospect who gave not a cent for 17 long years despite being invited to every fancy event, sitting on every prestigious board, and generally being treated like a VIP. At what point would a mere mortal give up? After three years? Five? Ten? But after almost two decades of tenacious effort, the organisation received a donation worth $19m.

But can you be too tenacious? What if that story didn’t have a happy ending? At what point does it become immoral (or simply a waste of time) to treat an individual better in the hope they will eventually open their wallet?

Much major donor fundraising – certainly as related in books written by US authors – involves a tenacious pursuit of those with the capacity to give big. I’m a great fan of these books, which are part memoir and part ‘how-to guide’, and wish more British fundraisers would spill the beans and share the secrets of their success. I especially love the insights into the lengths gone to to court potential donors: “Did he really charter a plane to get a prospect to an event?”, “Did she really cancel personal engagements to be at the beck and call of a newly-widowed alumnus?”. When relating these stories to UK colleagues, most people share my wide-eyed wonder, but one nonfundraising acquaintance was genuinely horrified by what he viewed as the stalkerish tendencies of tenacious fundraisers: “In any other job, that wouldn’t be legal!” But the history of the spread of fundraising techniques suggests we’ll be doing something similar on this side of the Atlantic before too long.

One of the best ‘inside fundraising’ books is called Born to Raise by Jerold Panas. One quote in it, attributed to a John Russell, seems an appropriate one with which to end this piece: “There are three irrefutable rules which will assure your success as a fundraiser. Unfortunately, no one has ever discovered what they are.”