Stop Asking for Handouts and Start Encouraging Investments, Author Tells Fund Raisers

Beyond Fundraising: New Strategies for Nonprofit Innovation and Investment, Second Edition
by Kay Sprinkel Grace

Nonprofit groups need to abandon the notion that fund raising is just about “shaking a tin cup” at donors, says Kay Sprinkel Grace, a consultant and author. In this updated version of her 1997 book, she advocates the idea that fund raising should be part of a comprehensive approach to development that emphasizes building relationships with supporters.

Ms. Grace says that charities should position themselves not as beggars, but as social investments. “Then, if requests for funds are turned down, it is not the rejection of the asker, or even necessarily the organization: it is the rejection of the need the organization is meeting,” she writes.

Her book gives advice on shaping a message and mission that will appeal to “donor-investors,” and on using fund-raising campaigns and other methods for building relationships and maintaining contact with supporters.

This second edition also examines how new demands for accountability have affected fund raising, as well as new techniques for annual giving, ways to get board members to help raise money, and philanthropic trends to anticipate.

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 111 River Street, Hoboken, N.J. 07030-5774; (201) 758-6000; fax (201) 758-6088; http://www.wiley.com; 244 pages; $34.95; ISBN 0-471-70713-9.