Fundraising companies are like professional cricketers

12 Feb 2013 Voices

Just as professionalisation improved standards in cricket, fundraising companies have transformed the fundraising landscape, argues Celina Ribeiro.

Just as professionalisation improved standards in cricket, fundraising companies have transformed the fundraising landscape, argues Celina Ribeiro.

Back in the olden days, cricket at every level was an amateur sport. It attracted passionate people of great skill (and, sometimes, means). It was, no doubt, a good game to watch.

Now, however, cricket is professional. Players are not only handsomely paid, but their performance made all the better by the investment in technology and techniques by cricket clubs and associations. And the ability of TV commentators to draw squiggly lines on the screen – that’s just great television.

The bats and balls might not have changed much, but the game has got bigger, more democratic and – purists be damned – probably better as a result of investment and professionalisation.

And so it was that, sitting at Lords Cricket Ground on a cold January night, I pondered the impact that ‘suppliers’ have made on fundraising. ‘Supplier’ itself seems a rather unkind word, transactional and subservient. I suppose that’s why the Institute of Fundraising named its inaugural awards for those fundraising companies enabling fundraising charities the ‘Partners in Fundraising Awards’.

You could be cynical about an event like this, but one truth is self-evident: charities could not work without these for-profit companies. Investment and risk-taking by agencies, companies, platforms and the like has been to charity what professionalisation has been to cricket. It has transformed it. It has made it better. It is part of the fibre of charity.

Charities can be sometimes too quick to stoke the illusion of days gone by, of the age of passionate amateurism, and can sometimes be too slow to acknowledge or defend the work of the companies they pay. Celebrating the work, skill and impact of these companies is something that is long overdue. Charities must remain tough on their commercial partners, but they must give credit where credit is due, and not pretend the whole fundraising programme is run by 35 volunteers in Cheshire. The awards at Lords are a good sign.

 

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