Toward Professionalization: Fund Raising Norms and Their Implications for Practice

Abstract

This article outlines the core traits of professions and discusses the extent to which fund raising possesses these traits. Three inviolable and six admonitory normative patterns of fund-raising behavior are described and their implications for the practice of fund raising are discussed. This article reexamines the fund-raising profession in comparison with the markers of true professions as suggested in the sociological literature. First, the core traits of professions and their relationship to fund raising is examined. Second, professional self-regulation is discussed. Third, the informal norms that fund raisers use to self-regulate are described. Finally, the importance of these norms to the profession and their use for practitioners is outlined.