August 10, 2000 | Read Time: 4 minutes
By IRVING WARNER
In the early 1950´s the Ford Motor Company began planning to produce a new model to fill a perceived gap in its line. Engineers, designers, craftsmen, marketers, and executives worked long hours on the project. It then occurred to someone that the new car would need a name.
So, Ford hired a great American poet, Marianne Moore, to create a smashing new name that would set the new model apart from all the other cars on the market.
A year later, the company breathlessly announced that none of Miss Moore’s names would do. Instead, the new car line was given the catchy name, the Edsel, after the son of Ford’s founder.
Last month, after almost as much effort — the National Society of Fund Raising Executives announced that it has new name: the Association of Fund-Raising Professionals.
Now the real challenge for the professional association is to guarantee that it can live up to all the effort and resources that were put into coming up with a name — and that it can become an organization that truly ensures professionalism. Otherwise, it deserves to have as short a future as the Edsel’s three-year life span.
While it goes without saying that no poets were involved in devising the label Association of Fund-Raising Professionals, it did take two years of planning, research, debate, marketing surveys, and the involvement of not only the organization’s Strategic Planning Committee but also its Name Change Task Force.
Not incidentally, those efforts cost $75,000, and the organization expects to spend about as much to help its chapters redesign their logos and take other steps to incorporate the new name into their own promotional materials.
In an e-mail memorandum sent by Barbara Mulville, the chair of the society, and Paulette Maehara, the organization’s chief executive, the goals of the name change were clearly stated. “The new name broadens the scope of our association and reflects both greater inclusiveness and the growing internationalization of our association and the fund-raising professional.”
They added: “While the new name instills a sense of dedication and exhilaration, much work remains to be done. The rollout process and ‘branding’ strategies for the new name are critical.”
Exhilaration is certainly not what I felt when I heard about the name change, and there seems little critical about any of it. I remember the days before the organization was incorporated and there were local versions of the Society of Fund Raisers in many big cities. Then it became the National Society of Fund Raisers when it was incorporated in 1960, and in 1976 changed its name to the National Society of Fund Raising Executives.
At each of those changes, my totally unscientific observations were that nobody really cared. And the same question applies about the latest name change. Will it make a real difference in any member’s life — or more important, guarantee that fund raisers act any more like professionals?
The association has the potential to do exactly that, as it demonstrated when it issued its newly updated Code of Ethical Principles and Standards of Professional Practice. The new edition should be sent not just to its members but to everyone remotely connected to the non-profit fund-raising world, as well as to legislators at every level of government, in the United States and abroad.
The code has a comprehensive ethics-enforcement section that explains how those who violate the code will be punished. That section, while ponderous, is nevertheless clear and fair.
But good as all that it is, the fund-raising society handcuffs itself from being truly effective in getting rid of fraudulent solicitors. The worst sanction that the fund-raising association can impose is to kick the offender out.
What the fund-raising association needs is the power to kick the culprit out of the whole business of seeking money for good causes. If the association were to set up some some kind of system for licensing everyone who hoped to win and keep a job in fund raising, then its ethics code would truly mean something — just as it means something for lawyers, accountants, and others to win certification from their professional groups.
Until the association takes those steps, it doesn’t matter what name it goes under — it still is seen by many as a meaningless organization. I know plenty of expert professionals working for wonderful causes who have never desired to join. Many of them would change their minds if the organization offered a fund-raising license that certified their professional abilities.
So instead of spending two years and $150,000 changing, explaining, and promoting a new name that is the equivalent of the emperor’s new clothes, why don’t leaders of the association follow up on the carefully constructed code and begin the process of making what we do really professional? When they do, I’ll be the first in line for the licensing examination.
Irving Warner, author of The Art of Fund Raising and a member of the advisory board of the New York University Center on Philanthropy and Fund Raising, is a regular contributor to these pages. His e-mail address is irwarner@earthlink.net.
