Passion is where charity begins, don’t let it be absent from your fundraising. It’s too valuable, says Kath Abrahams.

I can pretty much guarantee that if you hosted a dinner party for 12 of the founders of any charities, you would be unlikely to find yourself having a conversation about fundraising technique, or incremental growth, or process, or risk reduction.

To be honest, having that many founders in a room at the same time would probably be pretty exhausting and you’d need a serious lie-down at the end of it all. But the point is that one thing they would all have in common would be a deep-seated passion for their cause, linked to a single-minded determination to solve an urgent problem.

I first got to turning this one over in my mind last summer when I was inspired by hearing Alan Clayton, Ken Burnett and Giles Pegram speaking about the notion of thinking big. They advocated rewinding to the 24 hours before your charity was formed and trying to recapture the spark which would have galvanised a group of people into action. This appealed to me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve never wanted to found a charity. I’d be no good at it at all. But something struck me about the passion they would have needed to get started, coupled with the singleminded determination required to succeed in the face of all those people only too ready to list all the reasons why their idea couldn’t possibly work.

I’m not suggesting we should all start thinking like founders. But I do think that unless you feel passion for your particular cause, and unless that passion drives you to achieve the best you possibly can, and inspires others in the process, inside and outside your organisation, you are likely to achieve poorer results. That’s not to say that being a skilled professional isn’t important. As an active Institute of Fundraising member and currently chairing its Learning and Development Committee, it would be odd if I didn’t think that professional development was important.

And as a fundraising director, I’m absolutely looking for people who know their stuff. But stuff can be taught, whereas passion can’t, and passion is what gives people the edge, the thing that drives them to succeed and push the bounds of possibility. Kevin Baughen has blogged recently on the subject of passion. His thought-provoking piece argues, among other things, that passion without energy to harness and direct it has little point. I agree completely, although I would also suggest that energy fuelled by passion will get you further than energy alone.

If you want to find proof that passion gets great results, look no further than a charity’s volunteers. They haven’t chosen to support you because they want to further their careers or pay the mortgage (not that both aren’t legitimate motives for doing a job). They generally don’t care very much about techniques and in my experience this can positively turn them off. And they will run a mile from fundraising-speak.

All a volunteer really wants to do is make a difference, and they are capable of achieving astonishing results. In general it’s those with the greatest passion and commitment who achieve the most. We all know them and they are our gold dust. They are the ones who galvanise others into action, who persuade friends and neighbours to support their endeavours, who are like a dog with a bone when they come up against an obstacle, and who won’t take no for an answer. And the charities which are able to harness the passion of their volunteers achieve greater success than those who don’t.

So while passion isn’t the only ingredient you need for success, in my book it’s a ‘must have’, particularly in these challenging times when our instinct might be to batten down the hatches and weather the storm. A passionate, skilled team, each member committed to the cause in their own way and for their own reasons, are capable of achieving far greater things together than a team of experts going through the motions.