Why we are rethinking fundraising
The practice of fundraising is not built upon a sufficiently rich and robust knowledge base, and the fundraising profession collectively has not sufficiently valued, sought out, and used the knowledge that is available to it. To compound matters, the lack of a theoretical foundation underpinning the knowledge base has often led fundraisers to make poor and inconsistent decisions in areas such as ethics and regulation, which ultimately can impact the amount of money they can raise to help the lives of their beneficiaries.
Rogare (Latin for ‘to ask’) is the independent fundraising think tank.
We are the bridge that links the academic and practitioner branches of the fundraising profession and the engine that turns academic, theory and research into actionable ideas for fundraisers.
How we are rethinking fundraising
Two ideas
Richer knowledge
We need to create a richer knowledge base for fundraising. This means rethinking both the type of knowledge that underpins fundraising and how fundraisers acquire and value knowledge.
Change the culture
We need to bring about a culture change in knowledge acquisition in fundraising. We need to bring about a paradigm shift in how fundraisers use theory and evidence to tackle the challenges they face.
Rogare is the engine that turns academic theory and research into actionable ideas for fundraisers.
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We need to rethink what knowledge we need.
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We need to rethink from where we get our knowledge.
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We need to rethink how we value that knowledge and how we use and apply it.
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We need to rethink all the things we think we know for certain.
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We have to rethink and challenge the status quo in fundraising and not be indoctrinated by it.
We need to rethink fundraising.
You can find out about who we will achieve these objectives in our paper Rethinking Fundraising, which describes in fully describes our Critical Fundraising methodology, our Theory of Change for Fundraising, our transdisciplinary approach, and how all our various work streams and projects cohere into an ‘integrated theory of fundraising’.
More information
Help us to Rethink Fundraising by joining the Critical Fundraising Network
We are recruiting to our Critical Fundraising Network.
You are critical thinker? Maybe you are a critical overthinker?
Do you get excited thinking about the challenges that fundraising faces and how to solve them.
Are you looking for new intellectual challenges?