Active Fundraising Strengthens Psychoanalysis

Organizations that avoid fundraising have difficulty growing.

Organizations that hire development officers with the expectation that they will raise money on their own are quickly seeking replacements.

If a foundation board is unwilling to participate in the raising of funds, the development director cannot succeed.

Without clear benefit to the community, it is almost impossible to raise money.

Organizations that focus on need rather than benefit fail.

Successful fundraising strengthens every aspect of the organization.

Participants of the ninth annual Committee on Foundations meeting in Seattle last spring heard these and other thought-provoking ideas from guest speaker Stuart Grover, president of the Collins Group of Seattle. (He will speak at the next Meeting of Members, December 21, 2001, at the Waldorf.) Grover, a former board member of the Portland Psychoanalytic Foundation, emphasized that fundraising begins with the full commitment of a foundations board and the organization's members. “People give because they believe in the mission of the organization,” Grover said, adding that more than “85 percent of all donated funds come from individuals.”

Participants representing fifteen foundations from across the country were challenged to consider whether their institutes were committed to supporting community programs and fundraising. “The most common reason for people failing to give is that they were never asked,” Grover said, “and face-to-face requests to people you know succeed more than 75 percent of the time.”

The Portland Psychoanalytic Foundation's Consultation Program to Day Care Centers served as a perfect example of commitment to the community and to fundraising. Developed by Doris Jewett, a social worker and board member of the PPF and the Committee on Foundations, the program provides psychoanalytic consultation with non-professional staff responsible for infants and children who sometimes spend ten hours a day in these centers. Jewett, determined to get funding, wrote a grant and was awarded $60,000 over a three-year period from a local family foundation.

Grover said that an experienced development officer will command a salary of between $60,000 and $100,000. However, he added, grant writers can be hired for $30 per hour if smaller foundations can not afford a development officer. For example, the Chicago Institute's 2000 Conference on Children and Violence raised $70,000 in grant funds by using a grant writer and recently hired a full-time director of development.

Engage the Community

Foundation programs were discussed throughout the weekend, including the Consultation to Businesses Program in Atlanta, the Consultation to Schools Program in San Francisco, the Therapeutic Nursery Program in Houston, and joint programs with art museums in Portland and Michigan. Across the country, foundations and their engagement of community members are clearly essential for the growth of psychoanalysis.

But growth has its problems too, especially when monies begin to flow into foundations and differences of opinion arise as to how that money should be allocated. A number of foundations are struggling with tension between analysts and community members, who often feel their efforts are met with both a lack of appreciation and hostility by analysts. Until these conflicts are openly discussed and understood, fundraising efforts, no matter how carefully planned and successful, will be drained. Psychoanalysis cannot afford that unnecessary expense if we hope to maintain a presence in our communities.

We invite all analysts and community members of the APsaA to hear Stuart Grover speak at the next Members Meeting and also to join us in Cleveland April 5–7, 2002, for the tenth annual meeting of the Committee on Foundations. The theme of that weekend is “Fear of Fundraising Success: A Psychoanalytic Perspective.”