June 2022

I was a practicing fundraiser for 20 years in the higher education setting. I wanted to do everything I could to raise money for my school and turned to research to help inform my work. It wasn’t long before I learned the limits of the available research and decided that I wanted to help my peers by doing research of my own.

Although there is ample research on what motivates donors to give, there is less information about those who raise the money—fundraisers—and about the fundraiser and donor interaction. Along with a group of other researchers around the country and the globe, I am trying to change this so that we can have a more complete understanding of the processes leading into philanthropic giftmaking.

I’m lucky enough to be able to teach from my research, not just in my academic classroom, but also through The Fund Raising School, which is the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s executive education program. My work reaches hundreds of practitioners through this avenue. Thinking about one of my recent projects, on fundraising relationships, I have been told by international leaders in higher education advancement, as well as several university leaders how accurate and useful the learnings are for their teams.

I also see it as my role to distribute the research of others. A primary way I am doing this is through my lead-editorship of Achieving Excellence in Fundraising (5^th edition, 2022), which includes 39 chapters on aspects of fundraising, with an emphasis on research-informed practice.

I love it when I see the eyes of a practitioner light up as my work—or research in general—brings new insights that they can apply in their nonprofit. 

Collaborating with students is one of my favorite parts of the research process. Students are involved in conducting the research, presenting it, and writing it up for publication.

My research wouldn’t be possible without the fundraisers and donors who have been participants in the projects. They also have given me practical advice that helped to conceptualize research projects, including knowing what it would be most helpful for me to study.  As I noted, I am especially interested in assisting the Red Cross in its work here in Indiana.

Right now I’m working on an analysis of donors’ perceptions of fundraisers. Fundraisers talk a lot about what they think it takes to be successful in raising money, but we don’t have much information from donors. I’m hoping to change that.

I am also quite interested in unrestricted fundraising and giving and have begun trying to understand what approaches are successful in encouraging donors to give large gifts with fewer strings attached—and to understand which donors are more receptive to this way of contributing. 

Many large gifts are reported in the media, and an overarching theme in my research agenda relates to what role the fundraiser—the intermediary—plays in directing how these gifts are used.