Over the past year, Elizabeth Dale, Ph.D., Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy, and Maya Hemachandra, M.P.A., owner of Sambar Nonprofit Solutions, conducted the first-of-its-kind, national study to understand nonprofits’ adoption and use of Community-Centric Fundraising.

In advance of the report’s publication, they had a conversation with Tory Martin, director of communications and strategic partnerships, to share more about why they took on this research, what they learned, and the insights they gained along the way.

Tory: Let’s start with what is Community-Centric Fundraising? Where did it come from, and how does it differ from the fundraising practices we’re all likely familiar with?

Maya: In 2018, Vu Le of the blog Nonprofit AF called together a gathering of Seattle-area fundraisers of color. That group went on to establish the Community-Centric Fundraising (CCF) movement, which officially launched in 2019. CCF grew out of frustrations that those fundraisers identified with standard philanthropic practices. Over the last decade and more we’ve been focusing on one side of the equation – donors and funders – and CCF uplifts the need to balance donor input and desires with what the community we serve wants and needs. We can’t make a meaningful difference on social ills like hunger, poverty, and educational disparities without engaging the people who are most affected.

Elizabeth: When I started as a fundraiser in 2006, the concept of donor-centered fundraising had recently gained prominence and was the guidepost for many fundraising operations. A lot of my “on-the-ground” education was focused on creating deeper relationships with donors and personalizing donors’ experiences. While I value the relationship-building tenets of the donor-centered approach and the desire to have long-term relationships with donors, over time, the focus on donors meant they were often elevated, which could come at the expense of the well-being of the community and the organization as a whole.

Read the full article about community-centric fundraising at Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy.