To be a good fundraiser, must you have a passion for the cause?

Alan Clayton, director, Clayton Burnett

No. Many excellent fundraisers move about between causes in the course of their career and deliver excellent results wherever they go.

However, good fundraisers have a strong sense of values, often drawn from religion, political views or personal experience, and know exactly what they consider to be right or wrong. These values lead them to apply their profit-making skills to doing good.

They are passionate too. Some are passionate about their values, some about fundraising and the very best are passionate about donors and brilliant communication.

Great fundraisers could be said to be passionate about causes in a more general sense, and will choose to work for organisations which match their value sets.

It’s all about the money, and being good, too. Religious profiteers, the bitter downtrodden, the emotionally damaged, champagne socialists and caviar communists; great fundraisers, that’s us.

Amanda Shepard, director of organisational membership, Institute of Fundraising

Passion always helps, but in fundraising it’s overrated. Obviously fundraisers might not operate at their best if they have little or no interest in a cause, but fundraising today is complex and competitive – the days when passion and energy alone will see you through are long gone.

In fact passion can, in some instances, be a barrier; it can stop you understanding why and how a cause needs to be sold to others, and it can stop you bothering to properly identify potential donors and how they want to engage with you.

There’s no substitute for great professional fundraising. Marketing skills and training, qualifications, continuous professional development and networks are all crucial to that. Building donor relationships – preferably long-term ones – is what delivers the money. It’s about tapping into other people’s passion for a cause and converting it into generosity.

Andy Harris, director of fundraising, Action for Children

Yes – you need passion by the bucketload.

When you’re working late to prepare the perfect pitch to that big donor or you are on your 50th call of the day – after 49 ‘no’s – it’s your passion for the cause that will get you through the tough moments and ensure your charity gets the funds it desperately needs. It’s passion that will help you motivate a team of volunteers getting ready to hit the streets with buckets on a wet Saturday morning when they’d all rather be in bed.

There are lots of skills needed to be a good fundraiser: tenacity; communication; empathy; attention to detail, etc. Some days you need to be a salesperson and other days you need to be an expert project manager. But to be great at your job you do need that extra connection – that understanding that what you are doing is really making a difference to people’s lives.

Judy Beard, director of fundraising and marketing, Breast Cancer Care

There’s a place for passion in charities – it’s at the point when they’re founded – to right a wrong, improve a life, and change the world.

The problem is that passion on its own is not enough. It can be blind and an inhibitor to growth. There’s plenty of evidence that when ‘founder’s syndrome’ kicks in, if the charity is to survive and grow, the founder must go. Their passion is just not enough to sustain the cause.

An element of passion is necessary for everyone in a charity but the best fundraisers have a much broader range of traits, skills and qualities at their core. They believe in the cause. They’re skilled in the art of persuasion and communication. They are enthusiastic, energetic, tenacious, resourceful, and inventive. They have an endless capacity for hard work. All of these add up to something much more sustainable than just passion.

Lyndall Stein, chair, Sheila McKechnie Foundation

It’s a tough job being a fundraiser – you live by the sword; the harsh reality of variances, no amount of charm or sweet-talking will help when the income is down, and when it is up, what is the reward? In our sector we must just bask in the warm glow of ‘job done’!

To succeed as a fundraiser you need imagination and resilience. You also need to work with your head and your heart. Without a cause you truly believe in how can you navigate the choppy waters and survive the constant churn? Without the motivation of a cause that really resonates, how can you do the job?

If money and bonuses are what get you going, then you are probably better off going into banking – you will get the bonuses, but you will never get that very special bonus knowing that you have made your world a better place.

This article first appeared in The Fundraiser magazine, Issue 21, September 2012