Talk:Fundraising/Archive 1

Is there a reason that this "article" is a blatant spamvertising page for Wikipedia? I can think of a million other charities (i.e. Red Cross) that would like a link here too. The example of "Wikipedia's merchandise at Cafe Press" as a method of fundraising is blatant spam and in poor taste, IMHO.

This is NOT spamvertising at all. The category should not only includes the definition of what a fundraising organization is, but also a charitable foundation, the process of grant writing, and more. So...instead of linking the Red Cross for example, it would be just as easy to link a site that actually rates the top fundraising organizations - and what the criteria are. Finally...the worst of fundraising. How can you NOT consider an article on what happens when a charitable organization goes awry? There are so many examples, from the above-mentioned telemarketers, to the spate of evangelical rise and declines in the 1990's.     in my NOT so humble opinion, this is an extraordinarily important stub that could use some very creative and careful planning to give it the justice that it deserves. Thanks, alisonsage.
 * I have to disagree. I think that this page needs major work. For example, there are legitimate fundraising organizations in America and they have a specific designation: 501(c)3. There is a standard "rule of thumb" for operating expenditures such as salaries, campaigns, staff, and et.cetera versus the funds that are generated and actually do go to the sources that are pledged. I think that needs to be clarified in this entry.
 * You are not viewing the same version I commented on. Smadnani 17:58, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Oh. Ahem. Glad to hear it. (big blush) Thanks for the help link, btw. Very useful and appreciated! alisonsage have to figure out the date stamp thing...give me a day or two.


 * and I thot this was a discussion about why fundraising and fundraiser might be merged. This IMHO is nothing but irrelevant comments. It doesn't come close to a discussion about reasons for merging two very different topics... except that whoever started the discussion doesn't appear to know very much about them or thinks that they amount to the same thing. They don't. Ask a few people in the industry.


 * I agree - there is a lot of territory between product fundraising, fundraising suppliers, fundraising consultants, fundraising strategies, capital campaigns, tax law, I don't think you can just merge everything into one big article. I am working a little bit on the fundraiser page to add more info about product fundraising - see the fundraiser talk page for my suggestion Bryguy5 20:21, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments on reversions

 * Revert by User:Ceyockey of 30 October: this was to drop advertising for http://myfundrazor.org. Soliciting for enrollment is not something that should appear in an article text. Courtland 04:25, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I was doing some research for fundraising and starting a charity of my own.. Came across to http://www.ofundraiser.com from google.. They make nonprofit and charity related fundraising effort very affordable and easy... Thought worth of sharing.. Good luck everybody..

"National Association of Professional Group Fundraisers"
I deleted the following reference to "the National Association of Professional Group Fundraisers": Many non-profit organizations take advantage of the services of professional fundraisers. These may be paid for their services either through fees unrelated to the amounts of money to be raised, or by retaining a percentage of raised funds (percentage-based compensation). While both approaches are recognized and encouraged by the National Association Of Professional Group Fundraisers, the leading professional association for fundraising companies within the United States, the latter approach is expressly forbidden under the Code of Ethics of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), the profession's primary international support and regulatory body.

There is no such organization to my knowledge and nothing under a Google search, and the weblink didn't work, either. I can't imagine any legitimate association of fundraisers approving of percentage arrangements. There's a FAQ on this on the Association of Fundraising Professional's website: www.afpnet.org.

FWIW, I'm a professional with more than 20 years of experience, and I've received the CFRE accreditation. www.cfre.org.

Bikers
I removed reference to Bikers. I hope the author of this part doesn't mind too much, and I'm not sure that this is the way to do things (I'm a first-time editor on Wikipedia). It seemed to me that the paragraph was irrelevant to the overall discussion about fund raising, which is supposed to be an encyclopedic expose on the subject. One could just as easily have talked about fun running or parish fetes as the activities of 'bikers'. It seems to me that people should keep their own hobbies and interests out of what is supposed to be an informative forum/media for the education of people on specific topics. ..

Too much
This is a Wikipedia, not an encyclopedia. It's an open source model of audience contribution and if someone wants to include a paragraph about biking, they should be allowed to do so. Don't destroy this beautiful world of blurred ownership by turning back the clock 10 years or else before you know it "they" will be charging us for every email we send. I'm editing this page for the simple fact that someone editted out a link to a fundraising agency and then someone else put another one right back in. I love it...and hope it was done sarcastically. Cheers.

Status?
Is anyone actively working on this article? I noticed a tag at the top of the article indicating a need for cleanup. I'm happy to contribute, but I wanted to check here first. Uberveritas 08:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Merging "Fundraiser" article into this
I do agree this should be done.

200.135.33.247 13:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I see a benefit in keeping two separate articles, but it would probably be the better practice to have this information in one of the sub areas of the fundraising article, the part where product fundraising is discussed.

I think the articles should be kept separate, but at the top there should be a at the top of the article. Adabow (talk) 00:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

There is definately a lot of overlap. For now I added a product fundraisers section to the fundraisers page and included a wiki link on this one. Not sure how to sort this mess out - fundraisers can refer to a product, an event, or a person ("professional fundraiser, volunteer fundraiser"). Fundraising is more of a verb or adjective refering to the action or process of raising money. Maybe we could reorganize fundraisers page to be Product, Event, Person in seperate sections and make this page more of an overview of the whole process. Disclaimer - i maintian an online fundraising product store - iLoveFundraising.com, don't worry I'm not going to spam the page it just makes me an interested party.Bryguy5 (talk) 16:43, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Prospect research
Any ideas how we could add a section about prospect research to this page? It's a vital part of the fundraising function for many organisations - see APRA. Georgethe23rd (talk) 18:59, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Presidential Donations
I'd like to see an explanation of what happens to presidential donations after the event. Will the $500 million or so sit around until the next term? What are the acceptable/allowable uses for donations? Gregmcdougall (talk) 13:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Moved from Talk:Online fundraising
Below is the (useful) contents of Talk:Online fundraising, which has been merged here. --AbsolutDan (talk) 22:43, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Is anyone actively working on developing this article? Uberveritas 08:17, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Doesn't look like it. All edits for a long time have been trivial or addition of external links.  I've just nuked the links, since they were just lists of service providers and that is emphatically something that Wikipedia is not supposed to be, and besides it had become a spam magnet.  This leaves us with little more than a stub.   I was wondering if a merge to Fundraising might be more appropriate. -- Siobhan Hansa 00:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Ad Book section
At the very least, this section is too long for a subject of only marginal importance to the article. Ad Book's are not so vital to development as to warrant half the article. The section on capital campaigns (which are far more important and widespread) is roughly 1/10th of the Ad Book section. At the very least, the Ad Book section should be split off to a new article, and have a paragraph stub here linking there.

However, the section is written in a very un-encyclopedic manner. It comes off like a (bad) advertisement for 'Ad Books' - note that it always capitalizes the phrase - if you search 'Ad Book' on google, the first commercial site dealing with this type of publication is 'adbookonline.com' which also uses the inappropriate capitalizations. The writing style is remarkably similar. The user who added the section has only made one edit to another article. While I am assuming good faith, I don't think it is unreasonable to suspect some sort of link between the user Bafont, and the Ad Book industry. The entire section has no citations, and I couldn't find any tertiary or reliable secondary sources. Because of the issues with the text's notability/importance, non-academic tone, total lack of references and a possible CoI, I don't think moving the text to its own article page is a valid solution. Therefore, I am being BOLD and removing it. Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin 01:21, 3 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rober-houdin (talk • contribs)

Merge?

 * This issue has been brought up before (years ago), and it seems that the decision was turned down because Wikipedia guidelines were more liberal back then. but after reading both this article and the Fundraiser article, I really don't see why they're separate. In fact, the latter article doesn't even have any sources.  Erpert  Who is this guy? 02:46, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Merging the two articles
The term "fundraiser" is used in common parlance by laypersons who may not understand the entire scope of fund raising activities. From a professional fund raising perspective, the term "fundraiser" actually refers to fund raising special events, a sub activity of the Annual Fund. The difficulty in wide acceptance or promotion of the term "fundraiser" is just that: it refers to only one activity, and by no means the most important or most profitable.

The second objection to the term is that it confuses the practitioner with the activity That is to say, the professional practitioner of fund raising is known as a fund raiser. The activities that person pursues are known as fund raising, not fund raisers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.171.11.178 (talk) 13:37, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Where exactly are you going with this?  Erpert  Who is this guy? 09:07, 20 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Articles now merged - I have removed the very US-local-specific information on ad books as it was unsuitable for a general international audience. SFB 22:09, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Is something missing?
What this article describes sounds very chancy and difficult. Logically, there must be some way to get money that is simpler, easier, and more reliable. Therefore, I believe there is important information missing from this article. It is very biased toward doing something for your money rather than neutral point of view. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.36.41.79 (talk) 09:29, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Traditional fundraising?
"Traditionally, fundraising consisted mostly of asking for donations on the street or at people's doors..." Really? Is there a source for this? Fundraising methods such as direct mail, subscriptions, fundraising events, and grant requests all have a very long history, so I'm not really sure why this one method of fundraising is considered "traditional" (especially when door-to-door or street fundraising has such negative connotations for many people). Mhick (talk) 14:34, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Online fundraising and the providers
This article links to page about Fundrazr, which is just one of many providers of crowd funding donations for charity, so this is definitely biased. Just as there are a comparison page for british fundraising site, there should be some likewise for the US (so many, Firstgiving, Razoo, Crowdriser etc.) and Europe (Alvarum, Altruja, BetterNow) This article are also pretty weak on the whole online fundraising part. Any input? I have some interaction with the sector and would gladly help build this, but i'm also inexperienced in editing wikipedia pages. Would it be best to for example make an "online fundraising" section in this article, should the comparison site of british online fundraising sites be expanded to include the whole world? or should a new page be made? JJA-SKB 11:22, 18 February 2013 (CET)

Explaining Terms
I am a new user to Wikipedia. I am a fundraising consultant and I feel it is necessary to explain the terms listed below.

"The classic development program at institutions of higher learning include prospect identification, prospect research and verification of the prospect's viability, cultivation, solicitation, and finally stewardship, the latter being the process of keeping donors informed about how past support has been used."

This sentence only makes sense to a person who works in nonprofit fundraising. Wikipedia is meant to be a helpful source of information. Listing several terms that do not mean much to a layperson is not helpful. It is important to talk about these terms in a way that will help a broad audience understand how they relate to fundraising.

The prospect research process is about identifying people that have interests or values that match up with the work of an organization. In this process, we are identifying the passions of prospective donors. Once we have identified donors who have passions that match up with the work of an organization, we cultivate a relationship with them. We help them understand the impact the organization is making and how they can partner with that organization to make a difference. Solicitation is asking the donor to invest their money in an organization so that together they can impact people or a cause. Stewardship refers to how the gift is administered and how the organization continues to build a relationship with the donor and keep their trust.

Thoughtfulmissions (talk) 00:20, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

Contributions listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Contributions. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. Hildeoc (talk) 19:53, 3 June 2019 (UTC)