Fundraising as organisational knowing in practice: Evidence from the arts and higher education in the UK

This paper argues for the centrality of organisational practices in occupational learning with a case study of fundraising in the non-profit UK's arts and higher education sectors. Despite the need to increase charitable giving to non-profit organisations, little is known about the work, fundraisers must do in order to carry out their jobs. We argue that fundraisers develop strategic understandings and competences within organisational environments, which they put into practice in their relationships with stakeholders within and outside the organisations where they work. Our findings suggest that one of the main ways in which fundraisers learn is by negotiating and surmounting obstacles both internally, within their organisational environments and externally, around the perception of fundraising as a profession. We thus argue for the importance of establishing a “ fundraising culture ” within organisational environments; a shared organisational competence where fundraising is practiced as a legiti-mate and strategic type of practice.


| INTRODUCTION
The UK's non-profit sector has received notable public and policy attention in recent years due to an increasing withdrawal of public funding from central government and local authorities since 2010.
The resulting reliance on fundraised income has led to an increased interest into the motivations for charitable giving, as evidenced in the publication of generic and sector-based reports (Arts Council of England, 2019;Lloyd, 2006;Universities UK, 2014). However, this has not been coupled with an understanding of the work involved in fundraising philanthropic income, despite arguments that donations primarily occur as a result of fundraisers working with donors (Breeze, 2017;Bryant, Jeon-Slaughter, Kang, & Tax, 2003;Gunstone & Ellison, 2017). Textbooks on fundraising go some way towards filling in this gap. Usually written from a marketing or management orientation, they are designed to help fundraisers "get the work done" (Holman & Sargent, 2006;Lloyd, 2006;Sargeant & Jay, 2014). However, their pragmatic approach means that they rarely interrogate and reflect on the nature of fundraising practices (Aldrich, 2016;Breeze, 2017;Daly, 2013).
This article contributes to an emerging but promising field of research that seeks to understand how fundraisers carry out their work (Aldrich, 2016;Breeze, 2017;Daly, 2013). We draw upon a practice-based studies perspective that takes practice, rather than actors, as the locus of analysis and argues that knowledge is always emergent and inherent in practice. By applying this perspective to the work fundraisers do, we seek to understand how fundraisers carry out their job in organisational environments and the specific types of knowing inherent in their fundraising practices. This interpretation positions fundraising not as a set of rules and guidelines to be learnt (Sargeant & Jay, 2014), nor as a disposition of actors (Bourdieu, 1984), but as a form of knowledge, or knowing-in-practice, that is embedded, emerging and inherent to practice/s (Billett, 2001;Gherardi, 2000Gherardi, , 2009Ibert, 2007;Nicolini et al., 2003;Orlikowski, 2002;Schatzki et al., 2001).
The practice-based studies perspective has been particularly fruitful in studying the work of organisational actors with specific attention given to technical and science workers (Nicolini, 2011;Orlikowski, 2002) and consultants (Hargadon & Becky, 2006). We contribute to the ongoing interest in organisational types of work with a study of fundraisers working in arts and higher education organisations in the UK based upon 31 semi-structured interviews. Our initial analysis is informed by Orlikowski's (2002) classification of organisational practices and their related knowledges, which help us map out the sets of practices involved in philanthropic fundraising. Our data also points at the importance of those practices which fundraisers envision to be part of their professionalisation and/or the acquisition of a professional standards and a sense of identity (Breeze, 2017;Daly, 2013). 1 The article is divided into three parts. In Section 2, we introduce the practice-based studies perspective which we argue is a valuable approach to understanding how fundraising practices are linked to the emergence and formulation of knowledge about how to fundraise effectively. Section 3 introduces our data set and methodological aspects of our analysis. Section 4 identifies the specific practices and types of knowing constituted in the practices and argues that fundraisers' work is best characterised as an ongoing attempt at relationship building and conflict negotiation. It is by continuously engaging in these forms of balancing acts that fundraisers learn how to build up long-term relationships and how to negotiate, even if not always resolve, conflicts. Finally, the article argues that professionalising, rather than profession, best describes how fundraisers perceive and interpret their work, a balancing act by which gaining external public recognition is pursued alongside the practicality of gaining knowledge about "how they get the job done."

| THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: FUNDRAISING-AS-KNOWING IN PRACTICE
Since its emergence in the 1990s, the perspective known as practicebased studies has increasingly become one of the established ways of analysing how learning occurs within organisational environments (Billett, 2001;Gherardi, 2000Gherardi, , 2009Ibert, 2007;Nicolini et al., 2003;Orlikowski, 2002;Schatzki et al., 2001). Indicating a shift from individuals and their actions towards an understanding of knowledge as inherent in practice, practice-based studies takes a processual view of organisations (also referred to as organising) and of knowledge. If organisations are made up of "connections between and among actions," it is the study of such connections and actions that illustrates how knowing is sustained in practice and manifests itself through practice. Thus, knowledge occurs in and through action, through organising. It is always situated, negotiated and embedded, rather than a stable disposition of actors. Only when practices become "stabilised," organised around shared practical understandings, can they facilitate the construction of actors' identities (Czarniawska, 2013:14).
A seminal example of the practice-based studies perspective is Orlikowski's (2002) analysis of development activities in a large software company based in the Netherlands. She argues that the collective competence of knowing how to deliver timely innovative and complex products is not to be found in a specific technology, strategy, a leader, or even a set design or production skills. Instead, competence is an "ongoing accomplishment, a situationally enacted capability" that is best captured by a repertoire of five practices: sharing identity, interacting face to face, aligning effort, learning by doing and supporting participation (2002:267). Such practices, however, are not to be treated in isolation from each other; they "overlap and interact" (2002:257). When members engage in specialised training, they are building social networks through the practice of face to face interaction and they are also engaging in the practice of sharing the organisation's identity. All aspects of the five practices, individually or in group, share a capacity to help organisational members navigate and negotiate multiple boundaries in the accomplishment of their development activities. However, Orlikowski's analysis also shows that practices can have the opposite effect when they inhibit, rather than enact collective knowing, or when "not-knowing occurs"; for example, learning by doing can be lost when staff turnover hinders it, and "interacting face to face" can lead to burnout of those involved (2002:257).
Research on fundraisers in the UK lends empirical insights into some of the practices describe in Orlikowski's (2002) study. In her comprehensive study of fundraisers, Breeze (2017) suggests that there is a high element of "learning by doing" in contemporary fundraising jobs. As she quotes from one of her interviewees: "fundraising can be taught but you also learn by just getting on with it, ideally alongside older hands who've been there and done that" (as quoted in Breeze, 2017:94). However, another assumption equally prevalent is that in order to "professionalise" fundraising, fundraisers must learn first and foremost "a distinct knowledge base acquired through sustained periods of training and education" (2017:168).
Daly's research on fundraisers in higher education argues that negotiating boundaries is a central aspect of fundraisers' work. Such negotiations involve the cultivation of specific "professional identities" which not only help fundraisers address challenges specific to their working environment, but they also "inform and shape (directors of development) philanthropic fundraising" (2013:21). Daly makes a clear connection between the directors' ongoing understanding of "how to act" in a professional manner, in this case by adopting a "professional identity," and how such understanding informs and shapes how they act in practice, in their philanthropic fundraising. The implications for such research insights on fundraising are clear: fundraisers do learn (about their job) by doing their job. That is, fundraising as a practice is far from static, it is shaped and informed by how fundraisers act in their jobs. In what follows, we continue to investigate the links between practice and learning with the help of a dataset of interviews carried out with fundraisers in the UK.

| RESEARCH CONTEXT AND DESIGN
In this study, we applied Orlikowski's (2002) perspective on knowing in practice with a specific emphasis on how fundraisers "get things 2of10 done" within their non-profit organisational settings. Our aim was to identify a set of practices specific to how fundraisers learn about their work to then discuss some of the research results and their implications for future research in fundraising studies.
The study draws upon data initially collected from two research projects on fundraising, which were then combined into one dataset including 31 semi-structured interviews with fundraisers in the arts and higher education sectors carried out between 2014 and 2016. As a way to contextualise our data set, we address some of the differences and similarities between both fundraising sectors.
The main similarity between the arts and higher education is that they receive the lowest percentage of individual donations of the total giving in the UK with only 2%-followed by sports and recreation at 1% (UK Giving, 2019). This suggests that attracting new donors and engaging with existing ones is a long-term priority for fundraisers. In Given that our data sets originated from different research projects, it is relevant to reflect on our initial idea to amalgamate both data into one data set. Data was collected by semi-structured interviews with fundraisers carried out by author 1 in the arts and author 2 in higher education. In both cases, interview questions were of an exploratory nature, designed to understand how fundraisers carried out their work most effectively. Interview questions with arts fundraisers were designed to identify the work fundraisers do and prioritise in a context of government funding cuts. Similarly, the higher education interview questions were designed to understand how fundraisers carry out their work, with a focus on their responses and impressions on the role of philanthropy within their organisation, and to the implementation of government legislation on favourable tax policies. Overall, in both projects, there was enough specificity towards understanding fundraising in relation to the needs and issues affecting the sectors to have avoided a bias towards collecting data that would prioritise generic, rather than fundraising-based, organisational practices.
The arts fundraising project included 16 interviews with individuals working as fundraisers in arts organisations including visual arts (4), performance arts (7)  For the purpose of this combined data set, all identifiable characteristics and names were anonymised. We also concentrated on the part of the data that most accurately represented the orientation of our research which was to identify the specific practices that facilitated fundraisers' learning. Thus, we focused on issues around how their organisational environment facilitated or hindered the performance of their job, how they negotiated any obstacles and the conditions that led to effective, successful fundraising in their everyday jobs.

| ANALYSIS
The remainder of this paper maps out Orlikowski's (2002) approach to "knowing in practice" against fundraisers' working practices as Selected evidence on fundraising practices and fundraising knowledge constituted in the practice. Adapted from Orlikowski (2002) Practice (Orlikowski, 2002) Fundraising activities comprising the practice Fundraising knowing constituted in the practice Selected data One of the challenges for director of development is that philanthropy is seen as in a very instrumentalist way so … the way in which fundraisers would see philanthropy is how do you match the donor's interests and the strategic interest of the university. The university senior group professionals … will think we got a cash gap this year but these buildings are going up, we need money now, so they are driven very much by the need now … It's about relationship, you have to give time you cannot just go and ask for money from people out of the blue (FRHE, 3) Planning long-term fundraising capabilities and strategic priorities Knowing how to interact with donors and how to reciprocate: Identifying risk-takers philanthropists with no entitlement to benefits We have also instigated a new work group, we had a small group of people who were probably keen on giving … to just feel closer to the work, but not to We got the matched funding and we were doing really well, and then (it) went after the three year period … we lost the matched funding and a quarter of our capacity … some of the donors who had given with the knowledge that they were actually going to be supported 50% decided that well if there's no matched funding anymore I might think again about where I place my philanthropic funding (FRHE, 11) in theory it should make your role as a fundraiser a little easier … but I think at the same time it kinda makes it a bit more difficult because I think there is a higher expectation of what philanthropy can do and what it needs to achieve. There is a higher standard (FRHE. 13) The arts sector loves memberships, and it loves plans, and it loves different types of semi-precious stones, gold, silver, bronze, diamonds and sapphire. We had a membership program but we could not claim as gift aid. So I closed the program down and fundamentally started a program that is a giving program. You do not get specific benefits back (FRARTS,5) identified across the two sectors. We have revised her initial division into five practices into a classification of three fundraising-based practices: sharing identity/interaction with colleagues, negotiating efforts and learning by doing (see Table 1). In Table 2, we refer to those practices whose specific aim was to acquire professional knowledge and fundraising skills.
4.1 | Sharing identity/interactions: Setting up a supportive fundraising environment; engaging with inherited structures; coordinating and reconciling organisational differences Plans and activities involved in soliciting and raising funds require an input from a range of people within a given organisation. Usually fundraisers taken upon the role of facilitator: working internally with colleagues and externally with donors. The level of involvement often varies from donor to donor, project to project and from organisation to organisation. Fundraisers often manage such relationships across teams, departments and sometimes organisations. One of the main challenges they face is that of working within organisations where fundraising may not be a priority.
Internally, fundraising in higher education is often managed by fundraisers in a separate department who are not linked to academic divisions such as departments, faculties and specialist research centres.
They depend on the co-operation and support from senior managers and academics to carry out their role effectively and promptly. In the absence of such support, fundraisers may be less effective in connecting with colleagues and donors than in organisations, where fundraising is a core aspect of their strategic direction and mission.
A challenge fundraisers face is that of connecting donors' wishes with institutional priorities. Table 1 shows the identification of internal

Matching fundraising with similar professions
Knowing about how to gain occupational legitimacy for fundraising To represent in communications terms the interest of fundraising as a professional activity that is essential to the development of the third sector and, lastly, I would say to enable the fundraising profession to talk on a professional level with other professional organisations in related spheres, such as chief executives, such as communications and marketing people (FRARTS, 7)

3-learning by doing
Investing in skill development through external networks Knowing how to match organisational needs with shortage of experienced fundraising staff There are just not good enough good quality alumni relation staff/fundraisers/development operations people around … it's going to take them five years to really learn and really become good. If you have got experience you are coming to an organisation that's gone through a lot of period of change … some people will like the challenge but if you are experienced you might not (FRHE, 3) Sharing knowledge on fundraising Knowing how to network to further develop fundraising skills People can meet people from different organisations, so that they can share knowledge, they can share best practice, they can share problems and they can communicate inside a profession which is also misunderstood, not only inside organisations, but amongst the general public (FRARTS,9) organisational boundaries as a key part of sharing identity. In some of the universities researched, finance departments perceive philanthropy as a mechanism through which a cash gap can be filled, as one interviewee explains: "We got a cash gap this year, but these buildings are going up. We need money now, so they (the organisation) are driven very much by the need now" (FRHE, 3). Such perception, however, obliterates an understanding of the long-term a priori work fundraisers must carry out before a donation can be sought; for example, building relationships with potential donors and identifying the projects they want to support. Our data shows that even though practice. An arts fundraiser refers to the definitional struggle between marketing and fundraising over what a membership scheme actually is because the "marketing team does not understand fundraising." Even though fundraisers may not be able to know the cause of such obstacles, except for the realisation that "a lot of it is inherited" (FRARTS, 2), the learning lies in their awareness of the problem and the importance of organisational coordination and of the importance of "working our way out of it," that is, working effectively across department through relationship building. This is particularly important when the support and reciprocating of members in their giving might be at stake, as in the example seen here.
In some instances, however, fundraisers know how to work across these barriers. A key strategy fundraisers use is that of participating at regular meetings to interact with concerned parties. In these contexts, they are able to identify opportunities to showcase philanthropy and the importance of fundraising, apart from knowing what is going on in the organisation. Working across an organisation's teams and departments helps fundraisers form a sense of knowing their playing field and remit. They continuously change how they collaborate to make fundraising successful. When knowledge about the importance of organisational coordination in fundraising is shared at senior management levels, it can lead to a wider recognition of fundraising within the organisation and to becoming part of a senior management team. An arts fundraiser describes the learning process of gaining legitimacy for leadership in fundraising that eventually led to it being a senior management role supported by a "team that is growing" as the result of a "very hard battle over the years to put that out there" (FRARTS,2). Overall, there are consequences for the barriers and regular adjustment of a fundraiser's position which can be time and resource consuming for an organisation, but they can also lead to positive changes for individual fundraisers and for fundraising more generally.

| Negotiating and aligning efforts: Changing organisational perceptions; optimising philanthropic giving
The implementation of government cuts to arts organisations' budgets, and of the match-funding scheme to universities were externally driven challenges which led fundraisers to plan strategically how to optimise their fundraising capabilities. Arts fundraisers are very aware of the influence trustees can have on their work, but these does not stop them from seeking "agreement on all sides." An arts fundraiser mentioned the need to critically evaluate the benefits of raising £1,000 in exchange for a monthly report four-pages long.
By critically evaluating the dis-advantages of charitable trusts fundraising, it was eventually deemed not "financially worthwhile"  (FRHE, 1). This type of knowledge and understanding also required alignment across other parts of the organisation, such as leaders of "key departments,"" professors" and even "post-doctoral researchers." For all these constituents, it was crucial they knew that fundraising is "part of their job" (FRHE, 1). A key finding in our data was that by accessing existing regional and national networks and/or training events across sectors fundraisers learnt about how to develop capabilities, their own and those of others. The amount of networking and recognition of its importance has increased over recent years. A fundraiser was optimistic about the growing importance of "networking" within the third sector, even though this was a well-established practice in the private sector. In particular, it was the sharing of problems and making connections that improved the support accessible to fundraisers. On occasions, fundraisers seek specific guidance about how to be strategic from colleagues in similar organisations. This was the case of an arts fundraiser who now specialises in trusts and foundations fundraising after receiving advice from a colleague that this is "far more the way to go than spend more time on corporate sponsorship or individuals" (FRARTS,6).

It is important to understand the role of institutional belief in phi
In the higher education sector, a range of training is available and made use of. One interviewee indicated the importance of CASE, a global networking and training organisation However, the lack of a strong network. Which included academics, and not only fundraisers was a problem in higher education organisations, as an experienced fundraiser with experience in both the arts and higher education noted by saying that "the director of development would find it very helpful to have a strong peer network, if they work in a university" (FRARTS,4). Another form of investment is that of recruiting key indi- viduals. An interviewee in the arts noted how tailored recruitment can make an organisation less vulnerable to funding cuts. The appointment of a new artistic director has not only given the organisation an artistic vision that delivers impact, but also, in so doing, enabled the diversification of its fundraising streams. In particular, the appointment attracted a donation to fund the expansion of the development team from 6 to 9 people (FRARTS,9).

| Gaining legitimacy for fundraising as a professional practice
Our analysis identified a further challenge fundraisers faced in their everyday work: the need to gain legitimacy in their professional development by acquiring relevant knowledge and skills.

| DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In this research, the aim was to investigate an understudied area within the field of non-profit fundraising; the fundraisers and how they learn about their occupation through their practice in specific organisational and sectorial environments. We conceptualised fundraisers' everyday work practices as examples of "knowing-inpractice" and focused on some of the challenges they faced in two sectors, the arts and higher education. In the arts fundraisers developed practices to cope with government cuts to their funding and in higher education fundraisers established parameters to help them implement government-led policy to incentivise giving. While some of the data referred specifically to how fundraisers dealt with challenges, we found that this was only a small part of what they do in their everyday work. A large part of our interviews was trying to understand and make sense of how fundraisers negotiate their organisational environment in order to successfully raise income. We aimed to make two contributions to existing research; an advancement of the conceptual knowledge of knowing in practice for fundraising, and an empirical contribution to how fundraisers build a "collective knowing" or competence that is enabling insofar as it helps them carry out their job effectively. However, we concur with Orlikowski (2002:257) in that we found instances where competence was also "inhibiting," that is, instances when "not-knowing" occurred.
Our main finding is that a key task fundraisers share is that of overcoming and negotiating obstacles not only in the face of specific challenges, but also as an intrinsic part of the work of fundraising.
Some fundraisers referred to having to overcome internal perceptions about the lack of importance of fundraising which was often overlooked by other departments. Other examples referred to the need to overcome internal perceptions, especially from senior management, that saw fundraising mostly from a cash generation perspective and neglected the long-term planning and relationship-building involved in fundraising. While fundraisers have a clear vision of how their work should seat within organisational contexts, our data revealed that "sharing identity" was part of a negotiation process whereby fundraisers seek to establish their practice as key and central to the delivery of an organisation's mission and vision. Our data also reveals that most of the learning occurred in the practice of "negotiating and aligning efforts" as a way of dealing with specific fundraising challenges. Cuts to public funding enabled fundraisers to think strategically about the type of skills needed to diversify their income streams.
Appointing suitable trustees and artistic directors with a strategic vision supportive of fundraising was one way in which fundraisers, but more generally, organisations as a whole seemed to have learnt how best to support fundraising. Similarly, in higher education a diverse range of skills is required; especially creating opportunities to link and work with a range of people across a given organisation to make things happen.
The data also reveals how fundraisers are especially skilled at attempting to change attitudes towards fundraising within their organisations; either by "building bridges" or "seeking agreement" fundraisers are aware of the importance of fundraising as a key financial resource, and their work involves putting such learning into practice. Ultimately, the ability to implement fundraising-related skills and practices as a shared capability, and to prioritise these as a key part of an organisation's agenda was possible only in those cases when fundraisers had attained a senior status. However, even though fundraisers pursue collective goals, such as striving to overcome external negative perceptions, they are still far from enjoying some of the "desirable features" of professions such as "higher wages", "prestige" Breeze (2017:16), and public legitimacy. This point is made clear in our analysis of fundraising as a professional practice. Even in those cases when fundraisers are clear that they operate as a profession they are, nonetheless, far from being able to change external perceptions about the importance of fundraising.
Our findings thus both concur with and expand on Breeze's (2017:170) argument that fundraising is dissimilar to traditional professions, for example, in medicine, or in law, which have an agreed body of knowledge that contributes to certification. In addition, we argue that fundraising needs to gain legitimacy as an organisational practice. Our data has suggested that this is far from the case. Instead, fundraisers' ongoing work involves surmounting and negotiating organisational obstacles, especially perceptions about the importance of having a "fundraising culture," rather than implementing change. At present, such accomplishment is more of an ongoing challenge; a "goal rather than a resting place" (Gurin, 1985:88).

Marta Herrero
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2003-8367 ENDNOTE 1 Our references are those which include research on fundraising in the UK. However, there is a great deal of research on fundraising in the US where fundraising is a well-established practice; see for example (Aldrich, 2016;Carbone, 1989;Levy, 2009;Shaker & Nathan, 2017;Tempel et al., 2016).