ABSTRACT

Fund-raising programs are managed and executed by practitioners who are largely outside the dominant coalition of their organizations with little responsibility for setting policy or managing overall finances. The increasing number of major gifts and the increasing amount of fundraising activity raises the issue of autonomy and the fact that some gifts, by purpose or conditions of the donor, can infringe on the right of a charitable organization to control its own goals and operations. There are a number of flawed assumptions underlying principles of fund raising. As an exchange relationship, fund raising can be viewed as a process in which a charitable organization seeks to exchange social, economic, and political benefits it possesses for private funds from donors; and the power of each relative to the other affects the outcome. Symmetrical presuppositions about fund raising are desirable, and charitable organizations should adopt two-way symmetric model of fund raising to effectively manage external interdependencies with foundation, corporate, and individual donors.