ABSTRACT
Continuing the examination of fund raising from a public relations perspective, this chapter argues that fund raising is a specialization, or branch, of public relations. Public relations practitioners, have spurned fund raising as something outside their functional area. A public relations specialist for a Southern technical school that does fund raising “when the need arises” said, “Fund raising is one aspect of the PR spectrum”. Approaching fund raising on a microlevel objectives, programs, and techniques shared by fund raising and public relations. Many public relations scholars, including J. E. Grunig, stress that public relations objectives should support organizational goals, including financial goals, and that by helping the organization communicate with its strategic publics, public relations contributes to organizational success. Fund raisers generally claim that, in comparison to public relations, solicitation is unique to their function. On the mesolevel, the fund-raising concept of “matching donor interest” can be linked to Grunig’s first two steps of strategic public relations management.
