Achieving Synergy: The Three Elements of School Fundraising – By Dr Jason Ketter

School fundraising is a complicated beast. Without careful management, conflicting priorities can derail your best efforts. Principals and staff are often inundated with requests from a variety of worthy charitable organisations seeking assistance, at the same time as they try to support and nurture the bourgeoning philanthropic interests of students, who might be inspired to take action to combat poverty or fund medical research. In the midst of these requests, Principals may find it awkward to put forward their own school as a charitable entity, worthy itself of philanthropic support. Indeed, our experience and our research into schools reveals that many schools do not have highly developed fundraising programs, but they do express a sincere interest in promoting the social justice work of their students.

So how should schools balance these three elements of schools fundraising: external charities, student philanthropy, and the school’s own fundraising? The first step is to appreciate that all three elements are important in your fundraising approach, but they are best addressed in different ways.

AskRIGHT has recently produced a booklet, School Fundraising for External Causes, that seeks to provide schools with the tools to manage this first element of fundraising. Concrete steps you can take today include creating a fundraising policy, designing processes (that are communicated to your teams), and identifying your objectives. Taking a structured approach to external fundraising allows you to minimise disruption to school activities and maximise fundraising outcomes for the charities that your school is most passionate about. More importantly, it allows you to model responsible and compassionate philanthropy to your students.

The second element, which encompasses the growing culture of Youth Philanthropy in schools, is similarly important. Many students have an increasing appetite to raise money for causes that are important to them. Here at AskRIGHT, we are seeing this in schools of all kinds across Australia and New Zealand. Through their involvement in fundraising and philanthropy, students are learning social awareness, leadership skills, civic engagement, team working skills, service learning, empathy, assessment tools, and the spirit and meaning of philanthropy. Some of these young philanthropists already sit at the table of family foundations. Even among the majority of young people, who won’t ever be in the headlines for making million-dollar gifts, these qualities have an impact: making their communities better and offering help to those who need it most. They will become the next generation of strong, compassionate citizens.

Each school is unique, abiding by its own independent philosophy and mission. As a result, students’ philanthropic interests vary. But I observe that most have a social justice purpose — driven by the students’ sense of right and wrong, of individual and collective justice. These student programs often have the support of volunteers, teachers, and administrators and are becoming very effective fundraisers.

While many schools are adept at raising funds for external and student causes, they are not yet effective at managing this third element—the school’s own fundraising activities. Schools themselves are important charitable institutions and deserve philanthropic support, but they can find it difficult to find the resources to invest in the personnel and tools needed to commence a sustainable, and beneficial, fundraising program.

The answer is that the school leadership (board and executive) must find the will to act. Fundraising is a team sport. It can’t just be left to the fundraiser as the fundraiser needs the involvement of the board volunteers, the principal and deputy principals, the teachers, and other staff to promote and share the case for support. Further, fundraising is a profession and takes a dedicated budget that supports the professional/s who are implementing a fundraising plan, putting a great deal of time into running fundraising activities, and cultivating high-quality relationships.

A fundamental fundraising tool is a dedicated constituent relationship management (CRM) software system. Fundraising is about relationships and without a fit-for-purpose CRM designed to support lasting relationships the aspirational goals of raising significant dollars will be very difficult to realise. In a recent survey conducted by AskRIGHT, over 60% of the schools reported not having a CRM to support their fundraising activities (activities which raise monies for the benefit of their school) and yet the schools that had invested in a CRM were raising more money.

Schools must allocate staff time to work with volunteers to ensure that fundraising is done well and that the mission of the school is presented as important, effective, and worthy of philanthropic support. Schools must also find the will to set out the fundraising work as a strategic and operational priority and allocate sufficient human, marketing, and operational resources in the annual budget. Asking for a gift to benefit the school directly won’t erode support for the student project or other community support — it all helps grow the level of philanthropic support that makes each community a better place.

Dr Jason Ketter is a Senior Consultant with AskRIGHT, a fundraising consultancy serving clients in Australia and New Zealand.