Having clarified the role and importance of fundraising and reviewed the history of fundraising, we turn now to look closely at the people who currently work as fundraisers in the UK: their backgrounds and paths into the career; insights into their attitudes, social lives and hobbies; and data on their personality traits and emotional intelligence levels.

Fundraisers as stakeholders in a cause

The March of Dimes Foundation, which successfully fundraised to support the development of the Salk vaccine, was discussed in earlier chapters. That charity was founded in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose personal experience of having polio exemplifies the ‘stakeholder theory’ of the non-profit sector: that is, that one reason charities come into existence is because individuals with a stake in an unmet need decide to organise to meet that need (Young, 1986; James, 1990). So too, a personal connection to a cause, be it a personal passion for opera or a loved one experiencing cancer, is known to be a key driver of donor decisions (Schervish, 2007; Breeze, 2013a; Breeze and Lloyd, 2013). What has not so far been noted, probably as a result of the general neglect of this aspect of charitable activity, is the possibility that fundraisers also have a personal investment in the cause for which they are raising funds.

To take an example, the fundraiser (who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO)) for a charity that supports hostages and their families during and after a kidnap, offers this explanation of how she came to be doing this work, and her thoughts on what makes a good fundraiser. Her answer usefully reflects many of the themes covered in this chapter: