Introduction

This course focuses on the fundraising role and understanding of the organizational relationships that surround it. It assumes that you have some involvement in fundraising, but anybody with a role that faces external customers (such as marketing or public relations) will find parallels with their experience here. Organizations with a dedicated fundraiser or bigger ones with a substantial separate fundraising department may find that tensions and dilemmas emerge around the place of fundraising and its relationship to the wider organization. These tensions are also likely to be present in smaller organizations – perhaps not so evident as organizational issues, but more ones of role conflict. Teasing out what is effectively organizational tensions is useful in understanding why some aspects of fundraising are difficult to achieve. This course will help you to explain how the activities associated with winning resources and support fit into your own organization.