Researchers ask if anglosphere “best practice” is right for global fundraisers

Are worldwide fundraising practices, ethics and regulation dominated by ideas developed in English-speaking countries – and if so, do they crowd out practices and ideas better suited to the local culture of philanthropy?

For example, should commission-based payment for fundraisers be universally prohibited, or could it be appropriate in some cultures? And is it always the best option to adopt messaging which praises a donor for the impact they have enabled, or might it be less effective in societies with more collectivist as opposed to individualist values?

These and other questions are posed by fundraising think tank Rogare in a new project that will eventually provide tools supporting fundraisers across the world to adopt professional practices grounded in their local culture.

To kick off the project, Rogare has published a working paper entitled Does one size fit all? Cultural differences in the evolution and development of global fundraising professions.

It highlights that much of the thinking about fundraising standards originates in English-speaking regions — also referred to as the anglosphere or the Anglo-Saxon world — and is then exported to fundraising communities around the world.

Building on this initial working paper, Rogare intends to establish working groups in different countries, regions and cultures, to examine these issues. Rogare’s website says:

“The purpose of this project is not for Rogare to tell fundraisers in any particular country how they should professionalise (which would not be in the spirit or ethos of the thing). Instead ‘Does one size fit all?’ aims to provide a template approach that fundraisers in different countries or cultures can follow or adapt.”

Alice Ferris, a partner at consultancy GoalBusters and a member of Rogare’s Council and its Critical Fundraising Network, writes in her foreword to the paper:

“The fundraising profession keeps mistaking its own reflection for a universal law. What gets called best practice is often just the dominant culture’s practice, treated as though it were neutral and beyond question. Left unexamined, that habit exports the assumption that one culture’s way of fundraising is the way for communities who never agreed to that premise.

“My hope for this project is that it builds humility in both directions. Humility from the anglosphere to ask why something became ‘best practice’ before assuming it belongs everywhere, and humility from local cultures to look honestly at the assumptions of their own fundraising practices. The real work isn’t defending or throwing out any single standard. It’s asking what value that standard was meant to serve, and then finding out how that value already lives, or could live, in a given community.”

Full details of the project, including the downloadable working paper can be found here.