It simply does not make sense. If I am a "salesman", does that mean the donor is a "consumer"? If so, what exactly is the person consuming?
Consumer behavior is founded on the intersection of private desire and private benefit. Whereas donor behavior is founded on the intersection of private desire and public benefit. (Frumkin, Peter The Essence of Strategic Giving: A Practical Guide for Donors and Fundraisers
). By both a moral and legal definition, a donor may not receive any goods or services in exchange for their gift. So, then, what are they buying?Yes, fundraisers co-opt the vocabulary and techniques of other industries (often because professional development officers come from other industries - we are a new professional class). In my work I regularly deal with lawyers, accountants, and financial planners. To make myself heard, I use their language. But vocabulary alone does not make me an attorney or CPA.
A lot of this confusion stems from the fact that most professional fundraisers don't have a formal education in fundraising/philanthropy. Many of my former and current colleagues have "learned on the job". Myself included. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it means that as we learn we lean on what we know or what we see. For many, that means borrowing heavily from established sectors, such as sales.
DiMaggio and Powell, noted organizational development theorists, refer to this tension as normative isomorphic tendencies that stem from the “collective struggle of members of an occupation to define the conditions and methods of their work” (1983, 152). They suggest that uncertainty about professional work responsibilities causes people to mimic successful patterns outside their fields. (Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, 1983. “The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields.” American Sociological Review. Vol. 48, April. Pp. 147-160))So, we can easily imagine a major gifts officer, with little formal professional training looking to the world of sales as a model of success and co-opting its language and approach. The risk here is that as the major gift officer co-opts from sales, s/he can no longer distinguish between sales and fundraising.
The lesson here is simply that we need to stop comparing ourselves to established fields that appear similar, and focus instead on establishing our own field.
