Recently, I hosted a dialogue, through the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard  on the “Future of Fundraising.” (http://www.hks.harvard.edu/hauser/engage/philanthropy/) A great wrap-up of some of the meeting’s notes can be found on a blog posted by Joi Ito: http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2010/06/18/how-to-raise-fu.html.

One of the meeting’s practical objectives was to bring together some of the best minds in and around the nonprofit sector to begin to think through the curriculum aspects of a “Fundraising Master Class” that we’re developing at the Hauser Center. This class will train emerging leaders in the craft of authentic and exponential fundraising.  We explored how the class might be “open sourced” and made widely available both on and offline. It’s being launched next June.  I will keep you posted, through this blog, on it as it comes together.

While the fundraising course was the central focus of the conversation, we spent a lot of time throughout the day talking about why fundraising is seen as so onerous.  About why it’s viewed by so many nonprofit leaders as an ugly problem that they wish they didn’t have, rather than a vehicle for something really powerful and transformative for the organization and for the people involved in it.

There was widespread agreement that this is because fundraising is often not seen as mission critical.  Rather than leverage fundraising’s ability to fundamentally transform an organization and the people who are involved with it, most see it as something to endure for the sake of a larger mission.  This is why we get trapped in the “business” of fundraising and get stuck in the transactional mindset, missing all of the wonderful transformational elements.

All truly great organizations have fundraising built right into the fabric of the way in which they are organized.  And all truly great fundraisers know that they are integral, not separate, from the mission of the work they are doing. They are empowering others to do great things with and through their organizations — not for their organizations — which is about guiding people to look inside and discover their deepest sense of joy, meaning and purpose and then connecting that to action and partnership.

Here’s a basic tool I use to take measure of whether my mindset is transactional or transformational:  whenever someone I am working with makes a gift I ask myself, “Do I feel satisfaction or do I feel gratitude?” If I feel satisfaction, then I’m seeing the gift as ancillary to the mission.  If I feel gratitude, then I know that I know that this gift will forge a partnership that will continue to develop as something integral and transformational.  This simple shift from satisfaction to gratitude will lift me, my partners and the organization. And, if done at scale, the entire field of fundraising.