The Challenges Associated with Fund Development

Our organization must remain true to our mission, vision and values when undertaking fund development. In addition, we must consider the difference between marketing and selling when developing messages. Finally, we must tackle the difficulty of building affinity with our public. All three of these concepts co-exist and present our organization with challenges that we must consider within the context of fund development.

Our organization has taken great measures to clearly define a mission, vision and values that are the best reflection of our organization. We must ensure that we adhere to our mission and values in the context of fund development. If our fund development activities stray from what our organization stands for we will lose legitimacy and our reputation will suffer. Therefore, every activity associated with our fund development should be consistent with our mission and values. For example, our fund development often consists of establishing and maintaining partnerships with the business community. Before pursuing or beginning any partnership we must confirm that the potential partner shares some, or ideally all, of our values. The potential partner should not engage in practices that clearly undermine our values. Our partners should believe as strongly in our mission, vision, and values as we do. The challenge lies in the reality that very few businesses will have the exact same values as our organization. We must find a clear balance between our mission, vision, and values and the expectations potential partners since our partnerships may be vital to our survival and success.

Marketing is a vital part of our fund development. “Marketing works with the organization’s mission to allow it to reach out, both getting the resources and giving the services it is chartered to accomplish.” (Espy, 2) Marketing is much more than persuading our clients to utilize our services and believe in our cause, in other words selling our organization’s products and services. Selling is only a small part of the act of marketing. Of course we will employ selling within the context of fund development, but we