Fund Raisers’ Credential Offers Baseline Standard, Not Guarantee of Success

To the Editor:

Adrian Sargeant raised some valid points in his piece “Making Fund Raising a Real Profession: Next Steps” (April 8).

The training of fund raisers is often fragmentary, bouncing from Webinar to conference, and a bit scarce on the ground at the university level. That’s improving, though.

His remarks about the certified fund-raising executive-status credential, or CFRE, however, are inaccurate, in our view. He sees “flaws” in the process. He has “issues” with the assessment regime on which the credential is based. He sees “weakness” in the credential’s treatment of expert experience as “knowledge.” By that standard, when a successful fund raiser like Mal Warwick gets good results, he achieves them through something other than knowledge. We’re at a loss.

Most critically, Mr. Sargeant has ignored one key qualifier. The CFRE credential is not just any old credential. It is something called a “baseline” credential. It is designed as such. It is regularly updated as such by an outside research firm that specializes in credentialing.

Baseline credentials exist for many professions, by the way. Creating a good one—as CFRE has done, using rigorous best practices—is a well-trod path. CFRE International has been accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies. Only the best certification programs receive this accreditation.

This baseline aspect is an important distinction. A baseline credential offers the world independent proof that a practitioner knows the essentials for doing the job successfully. It says, in effect, “Your apprenticeship is over. You’ve worked in the field for at least five years (in CFRE’s case). You’ve demonstrated proven fund-raising results. You volunteer (CFRE insists on that). You know what you should know to succeed.”

Will every fund raiser with a CFRE credential succeed? Individual results vary. But it is not the role of a baseline credential to separate the weak performers from the stars. An employer who hires a CFRE without duly checking her past performance, portfolio, and references is making a basic human-resources mistake.

We applaud Mr. Sargeant’s advocacy for academic upgrades in our ever-expanding profession. We’re sorry, though, that his hasty (we believe) opinions have unnecessarily cast doubt on the years of hard and exacting work that have made the CFRE credential the sought-after international standard of baseline excellence that it demonstrably is today.

Denny Smith
Chief Executive Officer
CFRE International
Alexandria, Va.