Fundraising’s soul: Touching the donor’s heart with a vision

“The Fund Raiser’s Guide to fund Raising”
By Mayan G. Quebral
Venture for Fund Raising, 2002


Have you received news from the mail lately that Unicef cards are being readied for the Christmas Season and asking you to firm up your orders now?

You open a bulky envelope one morning, and you find a handcrafted card from children of Tuloy sa Don Bosco. You recall that Tuloy is a highly successful center for streetchildren.

You get two tickets to play golf in the Aoki Golf Course in the Eagle Ridge, with the added request that you please be a “hole sponsor,” so you can support mission work.

If you still have those cards or tickets – outdated they may be – hold on to them, as we tell you about fundraising – and about this book that has expressed the “soul” behind philanthropy..

Question: Is philanthropic giving alive and well in this country of 7,600 islands, mired in poverty, shaken by pockets of violence and marked by a lackluster economy?

Aren’t donor funds being re-channeled to new independent states freed from the Soviet monolith, to Latin America and to most of Africa. Earlier on, non-profit organizations – global, regional or national – knew what this meant: They must now rely more and more on local philanthropy.

Is the future for non-profits, starved for funds, bleak? Or is there a sunny side to this seeming darkness?

The book, “The Fundraiser’s Guide to Fund Raising,” is just the shaft of sunlight non-profits need – not only to brighten hope once again, but to light their way to labyrinthine ways leading to the donor’s heart.


Don’t expect just a quick reading of a “nuts-and-bolts” manual on fundraising in this book. While it has tips in abundance in every chapter, you may miss the soul of such a worthy human enterprise. Striking just the right note for the book, author Mayan Quebral speaks in the imperative: “Realize that fundraising is NOT about money.”

She adds: “ Fundraising is about a human need that has to be met. It is about the ability of your organization to make a contribution to the alleviation of that need.” She is actually saying that, if you are just interested in money, this book is not for you. She wants to address those non-profit organizations which have latched on their efforts to higher goals “money cannot buy.”

She volunteers “seven success seeds for growing your non-profit organization” – beginning with the very first seed: “Believe.” She says: “Believing establishes the credibility of your cause … Now tell us, would you buy insurance from a salesman who is not insured, a Ford car dealer who drives a Honda, or a lung cancer foundation fundraiser who smokes?” Touche, Mayan!

The next six “success seeds” guide the reader through concepts, principles, success stories, tables and, yes, generous quotes from the Scriptures and renowned thinkers. Heartwarming stories abound in this book – which gives you the feeling you are in the midst of a seminar listening to every motivation speaker whose “cup runneth over” narrating one successful campaign after the other.

Is this book comprehensive? Reading from first page to the last, one gets the impression that the author and contributors did not hold back any “trade secrets”. Isn’t this self-defeating? If they have given their all, no one would approach them anymore. Their desire to share a “good thing” seems to be greater than the anxiety over outliving their usefulness. They are what they stand for: generous. Look, at the end every chapter is a treasure trove of website addresses for current and would-be fundraisers.

A parallel thought builds up while one moves on to more complex subjects on targeting small and big donors, planning for myriad events, creating an efficient organization, selecting a working board, building a data base – and it is this: The book is telling the organization leader to revisit his reason for existence.

The last chapter asks the reader/leader to “face the mirror.” While the author intends it to remind the fundraiser to evaluate his/her fundraising plan, the sense to this reader is for the NGO leader to go back to the fundamentals: What moves your organization?

The book overflows with quotes, but the one used by the book captures the central message of the book telling organizations to have, first and foremost, a vision. The statement comes from a famous blind person, Helen Keller: “The only thing worse than having no sight is to have sight but no vision.” That, dear readers, is the soul of fundraising. And that keeps this worthwhile effort aflame in the hearts of donors – big and small.