What is Servant Fundraising?
Servant Fundraising is a term my colleague Lisa Actor and I have coined to describe our donor-centric approach to philanthropy, which results in long-term engagement and commitment to an organization by its philanthropic supporters. Our method takes the possibly counterintuitive approach of making your organization’s needs, goals, and timelines secondary to those of your donors.
Servant Fundraising may seem a paradox in its position that raising money to support your non-profit’s mission is not what philanthropy is fundamentally about, but in this regard, it takes its cue from the more general philosophy of servant leadership.
What is Servant Leadership?
There is a substantial literature surrounding the concept of Servant Leadership, with its most complete exposition in the seminal book by Robert Greenleaf. My own model of servant leadership draws on Greenleaf’s work and and that of others including Larry Spears, Robert Lieder, and Jen Shang, but especially that of Bennett Sims, expressed in his book Servanthood: Leadership for the Third Millennium.
Sims writes that servant leadership is “to honor the personal dignity of all who are led, and to evoke as much as possible their own innate creative power for leadership.” Greenleaf writes that true and beneficial authority is “freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader.”
Servant leadership represents a mindset of empathy, encouragement, and empowerment for all people. In my personal model, it rests on four characteristics that an individual must possess or thoughtfully cultivate and develop on an ongoing basis. These are shown in Figure 1.
The servant fundraising concept arose from Lisa’s and my realization that fundraisers must by definition be servant leaders, and that success in true and pure philanthropy arises from the notion that a servant-leader approach to any philanthropy efforts – annual giving, capital campaigns, endowment-building – is not merely optimal, but also necessary and appropriate.
Here’s the TL;DR of the ideas behind these four qualities of the servant leader and servant fundraiser.
Self-Aware: A high degree of understanding of one’s strengths and weaknesses, angels and demons, loves and hates is the wellspring of inner calm and outward stability. It is at the core of a harmonious existence.
Calm: Anchored in restraint and active listening, it allows one to remain steady in the face of uncertainty and change, a linchpin in maintaining clarity of principle and mission. And it allows openness and resilience to evolution of principles and perspective as circumstances warrant.
Principled: Clarity of conviction and principle is essential to a happy mindset. Without principle, one exists in chaos and fuzziness of direction. The internal compass is paramount in handling uncertainty with grace and cheer.
Cheerful: Lightness of spirit is at the core of self-awareness. The ability to laugh at oneself and not take oneself too seriously allows foibles and faults to become things that can be borne with grace, while strengths and talents become joys to be cultivated without airs or arrogance.
Learn More About Servant Fundraising
Lisa Actor and I have written a short book about this. And I do mean short: it’s intended for busy CEOs or Chief Development Officers who have 15-20 minutes to spare. It distills the essence of servant fundraising into 24 principles and four anecdotes. Contact me for information on how to purchase it.
