Don't waste your time hunting for large corporate donations
By Barbara Fanning
November 30, 2000; Canadian FundRaiser
"Don't waste your time hunting for large corporate donations." That's the advice handed out by Alex Capello, merchant banker and philanthropist-chair of the US-based investment firm Capello Group, in an address to the recent annual conference of the Association of Professional Researchers for Advancement. In Capello's experience, the bigger the corporation (or foundation) the more fragmented its ownership and control, and the more it behaves like government, with the same tendency towards bureaucracy, committees, sluggish pace and an inexhaustible appetite for proposals. Approach them, he suggests, as you would approach a politician.
In Capello's view, what drives the political and financial sectors is self-interest. Donations are made not for ideological reasons, but for their inherent 'political' advantage. Identify a politician's (CEO's) charities, and target those projects in your presentation, he argues. Never forget, he adds, that the corporate goals of the institution and the company's image in the community are critical.
A personal decision...
While Capello would argue that guilt plays a role in much of the giving done by Wall Street- and Silicon Valley-types, he doesn't discount generosity, family-related health issues, personal connections, personal and religious interests, or networking for business contacts. Donating money, he points out, is an emotional and personal decision. His donation decisions, for example, are weighed heavily in favour of who asks him for a donation, and whether the charity is within his community.
University fundraisers, on the other hand, John Perry Barlow told the same group, should be thinking about how they're going to relate to the growing ranks of alumni whose only connection with their institution is electronic. Co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the first to use the term 'cyberspace', Perry Barlow sees fundraising at our universities moving into a period of uncertainty, given the escalating reliance on virtual education. Increasingly, he told the development researchers at their meeting in Anaheim, California, skills acquisition is taking place outside the traditional academic environment. But how, he asks, will donors view the university as its role shifts from an industrial training model to a more ephemeral institution, where faculty come together and leave on a semi-regular basis? He questions whether the financial needs of such organizations will remain as readily apparent to potential donors as it has been in the past.
We still need to meet
What happens, Perry Barlow asks, to your school's case for financial support when you can and do acquire skills - online, and without the need for a classroom - from a variety of institutions scattered all over the world? National boundaries blur, he points out, as the Internet undermines the authority and clout of the nation-state, and as donor interests shift from the local to the global economy. Nonetheless, he concludes, while the role of educational physical plant will undoubtedly evolve due to cyber-exchange and distance learning, we will never eliminate the very human need to meet regularly face-to-face at a central location. His conclusion: start thinking of both/and instead of either/or.
For more information on the APRA visit its web site, www.aprahome.org. The 14th Annual APRA Conference will be held in Chicago, August 15-18, 2001. Barbara Fanning is Manager, Development Research at the Canadian Diabetes Association, 800-15 Toronto Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5C 2E3. For more information call her at 416-363-0177 ext. 292, fax 416-363-3393, or email at .
